Refuge
by Areida Rivers
Summary: Judeo Christian Keziah is the prisoner and intended wife of Centurion Justus Triarius Appius. Keziah has despised the Romans for as long as she can remember, but how can she show Justus the love of God if she cannot overcome her own hatred?
1. Prologue and To Jerusalem With Plans

**Prologue**

**July, A.D. 70**

Blinded by smoke and falling ash, Keziah stumbled aimlessly through the streets of Jerusalem. Her family was dead.

She turned when she heard the pounding steps of the Roman soldiers approaching from behind. "That's the one!" Their paces quickened.

Keziah began to run, tripping over bodies lying in the street and splashing through a puddle of blood. _Help me, Jesus, _she prayed, urging her legs on. _I will not become a slave to the Roman Empire._

She skidded into an alleyway, choking back sobs as her bare feet pressed into the still-warm flesh of a body left carelessly in her path. The soldiers were closing in on her. A burning on her arm told her she'd scraped it on the wall next to her, but there was no time. She clapped her hand around it and continued running with what little energy she had left. "Help me, Father," she cried aloud, her breath coming in ragged spurts.

She hit a dead end. There was nowhere to go—nowhere but back. She turned slowly, her sense of apprehension choking her from speaking.

The four soldiers approached her slowly; one was a centurion. Keziah sank to the ground as her tears evaporated. She pushed herself up against the wall behind her, as if somehow, through sheer willpower, she could melt into it and escape her pursuers. Cold fear washed over her as the centurion knelt down next to her and pushed her ratted hair away from her face.

He said something in Latin that Keziah couldn't understand, then tilted her chin up so her eyes met his. "I'm keeping this one for myself," he said in Greek. The other soldiers grinned and nudged each other.

Keziah's eyes met his for a split second, and hatred like she had never known surged through her. Then she fainted.

IIIIIIIII

_Author's Note: Welcome to my first extended historical fiction attempt! If you have read Francine Rivers' _Mark of the Lion _series, you will notice definite similarities in setting and storyline, but definite dissimilarities in our respective amounts of research. Mrs. Rivers is a very thorough writer; I am a very lazy one. Therefore I must warn you that this tale is merely an outlet for my love of Roman history, and not a study in Jewish or Roman culture. If, however, you encounter an error so egregious that it must be remedied, let me know, and I'll see what I can do. Enjoy!_

**One**

"Catch, Aden!" Keziah laughed and tossed her nephew a piece of fruit.

The little boy turned around just in time and caught it with both hands. His face lit in delight. "Tanks, Aunt Kezi!"

She caught the little boy up in her arms, and spun. "No problem for my favorite oldest nephew," she said. She kissed the top of his head before setting him on his feet.

Aden giggled a little and wobbled as he tried to regain his balance. "Whoa…" He giggled again and fell on his backside.

Keziah laughed and set him upright as her older sister, Beulah, approached them, holding the hand of her other son, Abel. "_Really_, Keziah. It's nearly dark and you're getting him all worked up. Come with me, Aden." She extended her hand to her son, who had fruit juice dripping down his face. Beulah laughed. "You _are _a mess."

Keziah smiled sheepishly. "I'll get the boys cleaned up," she offered, wiping Aden's mouth with a swipe of her thumb. "And I'll even put them down. You go rest." She patted her sister's rounding stomach with a grin and jumped back as Beulah swatted at her rear.

She took Aden's hand in one of hers and Abel's in the other. "Come on boys," she said. "Aunt Kezi is going to help you get ready for sleep time."

"Aunt Kezi!" shouted Aden, and Abel joined in, chanting all the way to the house.

They chattered like magpies as Keziah led them through the house, and as soon as they entered the room where they slept, Abel declared that it was time to play warriors.

"No, Abel, it's time to sleep," Keziah said. She dropped to her knees and began tugging at his tunic.

"Warriors." He frowned.

"Sleep."

"Warriors!"

Keziah put her hand on top of his head and tilted his head back so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Sleep."

"_Warriors!_" he shrieked.

Aden laughed uproariously at his twin's antics and joined in. "Warriors, Aunt Kezi!" He whacked her with an imaginary sword, then darted away, hollering all the while.

One very long hour later, Keziah let out a sigh as she looked down at her two little nephews, finally clean and sound asleep. She was exhausted. _How does Beulah do it every day? _she wondered. She left the boys on their mats and went to join her parents, sister, and brother-in-law in the family's gathering room to discuss preparations for their journey to Jerusalem.

Beulah smiled at her younger sister as Keziah entered the room. Keziah smiled back, amazed at how her sister managed to keep up with the boys and remain enthusiastic about her pregnancy. She lowered herself to the ground, attempting the same grace her sister always seemed to demonstrate, and kissed Beulah lightly on the cheek.

"Have fun?" Beulah asked, clearly suppressing laughter.

Keziah grimaced. "The boys are pure energy."

The girls' mother, Dara, laughed. "No less so than you at their age, Keziah."

Jacob, Beulah's husband, joined in. "I have no doubt you and Beulah gave your poor mother more trouble than _my _sons combined." Keziah made a face at him, and they all laughed.

"When do we leave for Jerusalem?" Keziah asked. Subject changes were usually in order when the topic turned to Keziah as a child. The family members present knew too many compromising stories that she would much rather forgotten.

"The morning after next," Jacob answered.

"I can't wait," Keziah said.

"Passover is an exciting occasion," Jacob agreed.

"It will also be the first time you meet Gideon," Beulah said with a smile.

Keziah felt her cheeks blaze. "Yes, that too."

Gideon ben Shahar was a young blacksmith in Jerusalem, and Keziah had been promised to him for eight months. She couldn't deny that she was nervous about meeting him. There were good reports from her mother, who had known him as a child, and her father, who had chosen him on a business trip, but Keziah still had her doubts. From what she'd gathered, he was a tall, boisterous man with a big laugh and an impressive beard. Though he was a hard worker and a reverent man of the Lord, he was also seventeen years Keziah's senior, and he sounded more like a jolly uncle than a future husband.

The conversation touched on trip preparations, and moved along to business matters between Jacob and Benjamin, Keziah's father. She watched as her father spoke, comforted at the familiar sound of his voice. Her gaze moved to his hands, and she smiled. They were large and strong, true carpenter's hands. As a child, she had always loved to watch him work—it was a habit that she had not broken. He usually sang or prayed as he carved and whittled away on various commissions. One memory in particular stood out to Keziah.

When she was barely eight years old, she had sat on the ground and rocked in time to the song her father was singing. His voice had filled the midday air, and finally, Keziah began to sing along. When she looked up into his hardened, tan face, she had feared for an instant that he would rebuke her, and that a spanking was inevitable.

But Benjamin had done nothing of the sort. He'd put down his work, lifted Keziah onto his shoulders, and taken her for a walk in the hills, singing all the way. Keziah had never felt so secure in anyone's love before. Her nightly prayers now always included the hope that Gideon ben Shahar was such a man as her father, and that she could put aside childish hopes of romanticism and learn to love him as her parents did one another.

Benjamin rose then, and indicated for his family to do the same. Evening worship was a longstanding tradition in the family, and one Keziah took more pleasure in as she grew older and matured as a believer.

Keziah took Beulah's hand and her mother's on her other side, and her father led them in reciting a hymn. The voices of her family blended, and Keziah was comforted at the sound. Their voices were not harmonious; in fact, Benjamin's deep, resonant one clashed with Beulah's warm tones, but Keziah didn't care.

In the past weeks, she had come to realize how little time she had left with her parents, sister, and surrogate brother, and was treasuring up the fleeting moments of her childhood to remember when times were tough as a married woman.

"The Lord is my shepherd," Benjamin declared. "I shall not be in want."

"He makes me lie down in green pastures," Dara said softly. Her tired face was filled with conviction. "He leads me beside quiet waters."

"He restores my soul," Keziah intoned.

"He guides me in the paths of righteousness, for his name's sake." Jacob's voice was warm.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Benjamin paused, and Keziah shut her eyes. _I don't want to grow up, Jesus, but I know I have to. _"For you are with me."

Keziah's mother continued the well-known psalm. "Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies," said Beulah, her eyes closed and head bowed slightly.

"You anoint my head with oil," Keziah murmured. "And my cup overflows."

"Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life," Jacob said, and the family recited the final line together.

"And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen."

"Amen," Keziah whispered. Her mother squeezed her hand and the evening worship was ended.

IIIIIIII

Centurion Justus Triarius Appius was tired. It had been far too long a day of marching, but he had pushed his men hard and relished it.

Jerusalem was close, and the Jewish Revolt would finally see an end. Justus could hardly wait, as he longed to return to his post in Rome—back to civilization, family, and good food.

Some of the men joked that the women got less attractive the farther from Rome one went, but Justus disagreed. Women were women. What he hadn't voiced was that he intended to find himself a wife within the next year and begin producing heirs. As soon as he retired from the military, he intended to set up a shipping business, and he wanted plenty of sons to run it after he was gone. Without a wife, however, his plan would remain stagnant.

He was worried about his father. Three wives and now a widower once more. Since the death of his second wife, for whom his sister Marcella was named, Justus's father had become very superstitious, especially in matters of the heart and his household. He had not allowed Marcella to marry, despite the fact that she was now twenty-two and had been a very eligible young woman since she was about fifteen. He doted shamelessly on his youngest—Lucius, only seven years old—and worried about Justus almost constantly.

But the strangest thing he had done in some time was charge Justus the way he had before he left for Jerusalem.

"Your wife is there," his father had said.

"Father, really—I hardly think that this is the time to be plucking up brides. Where in Jupiter's name would I put her?"

"Wherever it is you all keep the rest of the priceless cargo after you've loaded it up over there. Justus, you must trust me. This was no priest's game, no puff of smoke. I heard it as clearly as you hear me speaking to you now: your wife is in Jerusalem, and you will know her when you find her."

Justus longed to protest, but the old man's sharp posture and steady gaze brooked no arguments. "Very well. I shall look."

"You promise you will bring her back?"

They clasped each other's forearms. "I promise, Father."

Justus rolled over onto his back and sighed. It had been a very, very long march.

IIIIIIII

There was dust in his mouth.

That was Justus's first sentient thought. He sat up and ran his hands through his short blonde hair before he spat into the sand next to his sleeping place. _Damn this Israeli dust, _he thought.

He nudged a soldier with his foot. "Up, tribune." The man stirred, then sat up quickly with a little salute.

"Aye, sir," he said, his voice thick with sleep.

Justus felt the smallest twinge of guilt, but quickly pushed it away. No room for guilt in the service of Rome. He had learned that early on, since beginning his military career at age sixteen. His father, a prominent senator, had used all his influence to get his son into a military command that would allow him to make all the right connections at an early age.

Justus thought his father could be overbearing at times, but he had to admit, it had worked, and at twenty-nine, Justus had become one of the youngest centurions in history. The official, required age was thirty, but, only weeks from his birthday, his father had waxed eloquent while listing his son's achievements, and Justus was promoted and sent to Jerusalem with Titus in what was to be a glorious, magnificent siege.

There was no purpose in feeling regret, especially about mild, material comforts. He must be going soft in his old age, he thought wryly. He packed his bedroll quickly and attached it to his steed, patting the horse lightly on the neck.

"Centurion."

Justus turned and grimaced at the sight of Drusus Cassius Gnaeus, standing at attention.

"Yes."

"We're ready, sir."

Justus didn't say anything for a moment, sizing up the tribune. The man was of average height, with shorn black hair that held unruly curls when long. He had beady black eyes, a sharp nose and prominent cheekbones. He was an obsequious, ambitious troublemaker, and Justus despised him. His jaw tightened before he answered.

"Very good, tribune. Dismissed." He turned without bothering to salute, and he caught the glimmer of disdain in Gnaeus's before he saluted and walked off.

Justus tightened the stirrups on his mount and shook his head. He was sick of campaigning, sick of waiting. He wanted to get to Jerusalem, do what must be done, and get home.

He shook his head and spat out the dust that was beginning to coat the inside of his mouth again. Finding a wife in Jerusalem was going to be a messy mistake, he was certain.

IIIIIIII

"Oh, Beulah, look!" Keziah tugged at her sister's arm like a little girl. "Look at the city."

The family stood on a hill overlooking Jerusalem, and it was a sight to behold indeed. The rising sun lit the tips of the buildings and Keziah could see people beginning to move about inside its strong walls. Day was coming.

Benjamin chuckled at his youngest daughter's excitement, which rivaled that of Aden and Abel.

"Try exhaling, Keziah," Beulah teased her sister. "I think it might do you some good."

Keziah made a face and scooped Abel up, plopping him onto her hip. "Tell me that's not absolutely breathtaking, then I'll stop gushing." She gestured grandly to the buildings jutting up into the shifting colors of the sunrise.

Beulah smiled and lines played about the corners of her eyes. "It is, sister. It's very beautiful." She paused, watching her feet for a moment as they descended to Jerusalem, then looked back at Keziah. "Are you nervous?"

"A bit, perhaps," Keziah said nonchalantly, ruffling Abel's hair before setting him back down so he could run alongside his twin.

"A bit," Beulah repeated with a skeptical raise of her brow.

Keziah felt heat touch on her cheeks. "Could we talk about this later?" she asked, embarrassed.

Beulah gave her younger sister an understanding smile. "I was afraid before I met Jacob too, and see how wonderful he turned out to be." She nodded her head toward her husband, who had picked up one of the boys and was letting his ride on his shoulders. He was laughing, and his face held nothing but love.

"You were lucky."

"No, I was _blessed_. And I pray you will be too." Beulah gave her sister a quick, one-armed hug. "You're a good girl, Keziah, and I have no doubts that you'll make a good wife someday. You just need a little time." Beulah winked, then smiled and pointed toward the city. "Look, we're almost there."

Keziah grinned. "Finally," she said, grateful Beulah had allowed the conversation to fall back into lighter matters.

Dara came alongside Keziah. She looked at her mother, who hadn't said anything, but just watched her with knowing eyes.

_Nervous? _her mother's eyes seemed to ask.

_Terrified, _Keziah's eyes replied.

Dara smiled at her daughter. "Do you remember the verse that you learned as a little girl?"

"You and Papa and Beulah have taught me many. Which one are you talking about?"

"The one you and I learned the day Beulah met Jacob for the first time. Do you remember? We were sitting beneath the tree in front of the house, and we played with the leaves that fell from the tree…"

Keziah nodded, remembering. "It was from the prophet Jeremiah, wasn't it?"

Dara nodded and began to recite the familiar verse, "'For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'" She lowered her voice. "I know this is a scary step, my Keziah, and I know you don't feel that you're ready to be married. But I feel differently. I think you've reached an impasse, and I don't think you've anything left to learn from your father and me. It's time for you to move on."

Keziah nodded, lifting her face just a bit to feel the warmth of the rising sun. "I have so much to learn," she said. "I just worry I won't learn it fast enough or do it well. I guess I'm going to have to learn to trust my new husband and look to him for direction when I don't know what to do. But what if he doesn't know what to do either?"

Dara smiled. "Take strength in the Lord when times are tough, Keziah. He won't disappoint."

Keziah turned her head to look at her mother. "Thank you," she said softly, and her mother nodded once, patting her on the shoulder before falling back to walk alongside her husband.

Keziah watched the Holy City grow in size, smell, and grandeur as she and her family approached. The dust that rose around their feet seemed to Keziah very beautiful that morning, rather than bothersome. She smiled; she was walking on a dirt-colored cloud as she entered her beloved Jerusalem for her last time as an unmarried girl.


	2. The Romans at the Gates

**Two**

"Wake up, Aunt Kezi!"

Keziah grunted as Aden and Abel launched themselves onto her stomach, giggling.

"Pease get up," Aden said petulantly.

Abel's brown eyes pleaded with her as well. "Yeah, pease get up. Mother's not playing with us and Grandmother isn't either. We want _you_ to play with us."

Keziah shut her eyes again, but about a millisecond later, she felt Abel's fingers touching her eyelashes gently. "Open them," his brother urged him on. "She looks dead."

"Aunt Kezi, are you dead?" Abel asked.

Keziah opened one eye. "No, but you two are about to be."

Aden, who had always been the faster of the two, leapt off the bed, squealing, and ran out of the room. He was quickly followed by his twin, who tumbled off Keziah's bed with a surprised "oof!" and stumbled out of the room too.

Keziah flung the blanket off her legs and chased the boys down the hallway, but as she turned the corner, she promptly ran into her father. Benjamin steadied his daughter, looking down at her with one raised brow.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

Keziah felt about as tall as her nephews with her father looking down so sternly at her. She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled sheepishly. "Oh, I was um… the boys woke me… I was chasing… It was just that—"

Her father held up a hand. "Enough. Make yourself presentable and be ready to meet Gideon for the noonday meal." He kissed her forehead, tickling it with his beard, which made Keziah laugh as he sent her off.

She dressed quickly, but took care with dressing her hair, adding in a few twists and braids to her normal style, but was careful to make the style practical. She ran her fingers over her head. She didn't want to look like a vain, silly, preening girl, but she didn't want to look like a child either. She slipped on her sandals and then made her way down to the room where some of her family was eating their morning meal.

They were staying with an old friend of Benjamin's, an elderly man who worked as a potter. He was wrinkled and crabby, but he was a fine Christian and a hard worker, and though Keziah had never much liked him, she knew her father held him in high esteem. Besides that, he was Gideon ben Shahar's uncle. Keziah could only pray his nephew did not share his disposition.

She entered the room and found that her father, mother, and brother-in-law had left the house already. "Where are the others?" she asked Beulah as she sat and folded her legs beneath her.

"Shalom, sister, nice to see you too," Beulah said with a teasing smile. "They've gone to look around the city. Mother and Father are taking their annual walk. I believe Jacob intends to learn the route as well. Apparently he hopes to carry on the tradition."

The girls' parents took a long, circuitous walk through Jerusalem on the first day of the family's stay every year in the city. Keziah thought privately that her sister and husband would be just sweet a pair on their walk as her parents, and hoped that Jacob would insist he and Beulah do the same as Benjamin and Dara had done for decades.

Beulah sipped the goat's milk from her wooden goblet. Suddenly, her eyes widened in surprise, and then she laughed.

"What is it?" Keziah asked, leaning forward.

Beulah was smiling, and shook her dark head. "Just the baby," she said, laying her hand over her stomach and her unborn child. "She is far more active than even the twins were," she said with a chuckle.

"She?" Keziah raised both brows.

"Just a maternal instinct."

"And have you shared this _maternal instinct _with Jacob?"

Beulah shook her head. "Not yet. He so wants another son that I haven't had the heart to tell him."

"What are you going to name her?" Keziah asked. She leaned forward and put her hands over her sisters'.

"I was thinking Miriam."

Keziah beamed. "It's a beautiful name. What does it mean?"

"Strong-willed," Beulah said dryly, glancing down at her stomach.

Both sisters laughed and finished their breakfast together.

By the time the sun had almost reached its peak, so had Keziah's nerves. Gideon would be arriving at any moment, and she had never been so anxious in her life. Elijah ben Shahar, the prickly old man, was standing while everyone else sat, his arms crossed over his chest as his critical eyes scanned the room.

Keziah had to tighten her jaw to keep from fidgeting as she fell under his harsh gaze yet again. He wasn't unkind, but he was strict and Keziah knew he did not approve of her free spirited ways. She loved to laugh, to play, and she knew Elijah ben Shahar thought her childish and frivolous. Despite that, she was gaining a grudging respect for the man, who worked hard and loved the Father with all he had.

Keziah folded her hands in front of her body demurely, forcing herself to think docile thoughts. She was so focused that she didn't hear her father and brother-in-law enter the house, nor did she see the tall man approach her.

"So this is the one." It was a booming voice, and the sound made her head shoot up. Her eyes met those of a tall, black-haired man with a friendly smile lurking beneath his beard.

"Yes. Gideon, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Keziah."

She glanced at her father, and caught the flash of sadness in his face before he masked it.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Gideon said, kissing her forehead. His beard tickled like her father's. "I have heard very much about you."

"And I you," Keziah said, cursing herself for not thinking up something more clever to say. She was glad when her father moved the family along into the dining room, which kept her family's attention diverted at least a little longer.

Beulah sent her an encouraging look as everyone took their seats, Elijah at one end of the low table and Benjamin at the other. Gideon was seated to the right of his uncle, and Keziah was directly across the table from him and one place down. He caught her eye just before they joined hands to pray, and he winked at her. Keziah felt her face flare up as she joined hands with Abel on her right and Aden on her left.

"Our Most Heavenly Father," began Elijah. "We thank you for this day that you given us. We thank you for the food you have laid before us. We thank you for the gifts of family and unity. We ask you to give us gentle spirits, to make us humble and meek unto you, seeking only to further your work and not our own agendas. Please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and give us the strength to do what is required of us. We ask all this in Jesus Christ, our Savior's name, amen."

"Amen," chorused the rest of the table.

"Amen!" shouted Abel from her right, which made Aden laugh.

"Amen!" he called to his twin from around Keziah.

Everyone but Elijah laughed. "Here are two that are making a joyful noise unto the Lord," Keziah commented, still smiling.

Unfortunately, the boys took that as a sign that they could yell at the table. "Food!" shouted Abel.

"Foooooooood!" screamed Aden, both boys giggling wildly.

"Boys." Jacob silenced his sons with no more than a stern look.

Keziah was biting down on her lip to keep from laughing, but her amusement died a fast death when Elijah stared hard at her, shook his head once, and returned his focus to his food. Shame washed over her. _I'm still a child, aren't I, Father? _She couldn't bring herself to look at Gideon, worried that he might have seen her too, and that would be too much to bear.

The meal passed without further incident, and Keziah offered to put the boys down for their nap the second it was ended. Beulah gave her a good hard stare, but agreed.

Keziah felt her shoulders relax the instant she escaped the room as she herded the twins upstairs to the room the three were sharing.

"Are you ready for your nap?" she asked the boys as though it was the most exciting thing they had ever done in their lives.

Abel replied with a tired "uh huh" and Aden only nodded through his yawn. Keziah smiled as she helped them lie down. She sat on the floor next to their bedroll and ran her hand slowly up and down Abel's back as he drifted to sleep. His dark eyelashes fluttered on his olive skin, and Keziah smiled again. They looked warm and comfortable, full of food and happy.

"You two are so lucky," she whispered, touching Aden's smooth black hair with two fingers. "You love God in the only way you know how, and no one rebukes you for it. It's perfectly acceptable for you to shout and laugh… to play and have a good time without being disrespectful or irreverent. Why is that so wrong for me to do?"

She pulled her knees up to her chest, leaning her head against them. They were beautiful, her nephews. She felt a prickling in her throat and swallowed. "I'm scared," she said softly. "Gideon seems kind, like a good man, but I just…" Two tears fell and seeped into the fabric of her dress. "I just _know _I'll be a failure as a wife." She wiped away her tears fiercely, shaking her head. "Help me, Jesus," she prayed, burying her face in her knees. "Help me."

IIIIIIII

Footsteps pounding outside her door woke her out of her light sleep. Keziah started, her head shooting upright, then she groaned and rubbed her neck, still stiff from the odd position in which she'd fallen asleep. She couldn't have slept long; no more than half an hour, but the entire atmosphere of the city had changed.

Frowning, she made sure the boys were still sleeping peacefully and then rose, padding downstairs into the room where her family was supposed to be talking after the meal. It was deserted.

She turned and almost ran into Beulah. "Keziah, there you are," she said, her face red as she puffed a little. "There is news, little sister, bad tidings."

Keziah's eyes widened and she put her hands on her sister's arms. "What is it? What's happened?"

"The Romans are coming," said Jacob as he came upon the two women in the hallway.

"What?" The word was torn from Keziah's throat like a gasp.

"Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus are practically outside the gates. They intend to stop the Jewish Revolt."

The world was spinning. Keziah's hold on her sister tightened. "No," she managed to say. "They can't come here."

"Zion is a Roman province now," Jacob said, his mouth set in a grim line. "They can come, and they are."

Beulah sensed that Keziah was unable to speak, struck dumb in her shock, and she looked to her husband. "When?" she asked softly. There was barely an inkling of fear in her eyes, but Keziah knew instantly it was not for herself; it was for her children, her parents, her younger sister, her husband.

"They will reach the gates tomorrow," Jacob answered.

Beulah pulled her sister into an embrace, cupping the back of Keziah's head in her hand. "Father preserve us," she murmured.

Keziah removed herself from her sister's arms as quickly as she'd been pulled in, her head still shaking in disbelief. She stepped backward, watching Jacob and Beulah, then began to run. She ran out of the house and into the street, where people moved quickly, not speaking. The faces of the men were tight and worried; most of the women were pale and some hysterical.

Keziah ran without thinking, running as though if she ran long enough, she could escape what was about to happen. She dodged children in the streets, sulking as their playtime was interrupted by parents herding them indoors. She ran until she felt her heart would burst free from her chest and she was unable to drag any more air into her lungs, and then she stopped, leaning over to clutch her knees as she gasped desperately for oxygen. It took every ounce of self-control in her body to keep from retching.

"Keziah."

She straightened, and found herself staring up into the face of her husband-to-be.

Gideon ben Shahar was little surprised when he saw Keziah sprint out of his uncle's house, her eyes wide like a spooked horse. She seemed like a good girl, but she was still a girl, and bound to react impetuously when faced with news of such magnitude.

He approached her slowly, not wishing to scare her off. She was a beautiful young lady, but clearly distressed. Tears shone in her eyes, and her face was red from exertion. Her chest heaved and her hair was disheveled, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

"It's all right," he said in a low, calm voice, as quiet as he could be while still being heard over the noise in the street.

"How can you say everything is all right?" she demanded, her voice choked in a sob. "How can you act as though the city isn't being torn down around us?"

"Because I have faith that everything will turn out exactly the way it is supposed to," he said gently, stepping toward her. Her hysterics also came as little surprise. Both from what he gathered from her family, as well as what he'd observed that afternoon, she was clearly one who liked stability, and enjoyed everyday things—like playing with her nephews. He had wondered slightly at how she would react to a time when the outcome was uncertain, and he had narrowed it down between solemn silence and fear, and outright panic. He was observing the latter now, and wondered again if she perhaps settled into the former along with acceptance.

She had not spoken, and now her head was bowed. Gideon caught sight of the tears falling from her face and smashing into the dust, and he wished for an instant he could hug her. It would not be appropriate, however, to do such a thing while they were still betrothed and without the presence of a chaperone.

She lifted her head, and Gideon was struck again by what a beauty she was—and yet she was totally without conceit. He suspected it had to do with both her youth and her upbringing. She wiped away her tears with the heel of her hands. "Will you take me back?" she asked, not meeting his eyes. "Please."

"Why do you think I followed you?" he asked with a little smile. She still did not look at him, and Gideon wished he knew whether it was because she was embarrassed or simply trying to compose herself.

They walked back to the house in silence, Gideon careful to keep a respectable distance from her. He reflected on how opposite this journey was to the one they had taken only moments ago.

For one, she was aware of his presence. He doubted that she'd seen anything as she bolted from the house, which was also probably the reason she asked him to escort her back—she was lost. He'd had trouble keeping up with her at times; she was quick and dodged obstacles easily. Gideon was fast enough, but not nearly as agile as Keziah, and he'd had to stop dead in his tracks more than once to keep from trampling the others in the street.

Also, their pace was so leisurely that it was going to take them three times as long to get back to the house. He glanced over at her. Her head was held erect and her eyes were dry, but still slightly swollen and her nose was red.

"Thank you for coming after me," she said suddenly.

"You're welcome."

They reached the house, and Gideon caught her hand before she could reenter. He let her go when she turned and he pointed to her cheek. "You have a smudge," he told her with a kind smile.

"Oh. Thank you." She wiped it off with the back of her hand, then looked up at him, her large dark eyes still looking frightened, but it was covered better now. "I'm sorry I ran away," she said, and she was so sincere it made Gideon's heart ache.

"We all react differently to crisis," he said. "Yours was a natural reflex, attempting to run from the trouble looming over us. But you can't always run. Things will catch up to you, and there's no point in trying to hide anyway. We have a Protector, remember?"

Keziah nodded. "I know. I think I just need to be reminded. I like you very much, Gideon."

"And I you, Keziah. But I must thank you as well."

Her brows creased. "For what?"

"Reminding me to remember my Protector, and not allow myself to think I can solve my problems alone."

She smiled at him, and Gideon found himself drawn to that smile; it was innocent as a child's. "Then I am glad I ran away."

Gideon laughed. "I pray you won't make a habit of it.".

"Trust me, I won't," Keziah said, her face completely serious.

"Why so certain?"

She wrinkled up her nose. "I got lost."

Gideon grinned, and ushered her into the house.


	3. Trapped

**Three**

The Romans were as prompt as they were brutal. The troops arrived outside the now-barred gates of Jerusalem right as they were predicted to, and they declared their intention to sack the city.

A week later, food supplies were low, and tempers ran high. Thievery was rampant in the streets, making it unsafe for anyone to leave the house alone, and the women and children staying in the Shahar household were not allowed to venture outdoors at all.

It was a muggy, cloudy day in early July when Beulah went into labor. Keziah and her mother attended to her through the long process, far longer than her labor with the twins had been.

Keziah rushed out of the upstairs bedroom and down the stairs to fetch more clean cloths and skidded around Aden and Abel, who were jabbering up at their grandfather in the hallway. "Excuse me," she called over her shoulder, snatching up the cloths and sprinting back up the stairs. She nearly ran into Jacob, who had alternately been pacing downstairs and in front of the doorway, nervously awaiting news.

His eyes grew wide when Keziah prepared to rush back into the room, and he caught her by the shoulders. "Has it happened?"

"No, not yet," she said breathlessly. She reentered the room and laid the cloths next to her mother.

"Thank you, Keziah," Dara said calmly. "Please make sure the door is closed properly to allow your sister her privacy."

Keziah closed the door more firmly, then resumed her place at her sister's side, taking her hand in both of hers.

"You're doing beautifully, Beulah," Dara said, her tone soft and soothing. "Keep breathing… that's it. Nice and steady. Perfect. Keziah, will you wipe your sister's brow please?"

Keziah dipped a cloth in water, leaving one of her hands in Beulah's tight grasp, and then patted her sister's sweat-dotted brow gently. Beulah's face seized up suddenly, and her mouth twisted in a grimace as she fought against the scream she clearly wanted to let out.

Keziah drew her hand back quickly and dropped the rag to the side, placing her damp hand over her sister's, which was clamped around Keziah's hand in a vice-like grip.

"Breathe, Beulah," Dara said. "Breathe, darling. You're doing fine. Almost over. They're getting shorter now, sweetheart; it's almost over."

Beulah let out a wretched moan as a tear slipped out of her eye and rolled down her cheek. Keziah's throat tightened at seeing her sister in so much pain. She had not been so close to the birth of the twins', having been nearly three years younger and with many more experienced women around to assist.

Several agonizing contractions later, Dara nodded. "It's time, Beulah. It's time for you to push. Are you ready?"

Beulah gave one nod, her cheeks red and her teeth gritted.

Dara got down on the floor and sent Keziah a look of encouragement before she gave both her daughters a nod. "Go. _Push_, Beulah!"

Beulah's entire face tightened and she shut her eyes. Keziah held on tighter, praying as fast and as fervently as she could. _Please, Jesus. Bring this baby into the world safely and quickly. Put Your hand on my sister… relieve her of her pain… Oh, Jesus, help us. _

"Good, Beulah, you're doing beautifully. Give me another big one, darling, just a little longer now."

Beulah let out a scream and Keziah had to fight to keep from crying. "Almost there," she said to her sister. "You're so close… you're so brave… keep going…"

"I see the head, Beulah!" Dara cried out. "One more big one, and you're there. Come on, my daughter, give me another beautiful grandchild. Just… one… more…"

And with a shout that reverberated in Keziah's ears and one huge push, another sound and another life joined the room.

Dara was crying and laughing as she cleaned her third grandchild, her dark hair, touched by gray, matted to her forehead as she kissed the baby's stomach. "You have a daughter, Beulah. A beautiful daughter."

And when mother and daughter met for the first time, Keziah found herself crying as well.

"Miriam," Beulah said, tears streaming down her cheeks as well as she held her healthy baby girl to her breast. Her hands, seemingly large in comparison, counted the fingers and toes of her new daughter with infinite care, and for an instant, Keziah felt love. Not love as she'd felt it in a hug from her father, or in a kiss from her sister, but love as a tangible presence, moving about the room and in the hearts of all present.

Laughing and crying, she ran from the room and ignoring the filth of the birthing room that covered her, launched herself into the arms of her brother-in-law. Jacob had been pacing and was pale beneath his beard. "You have a daughter," she exclaimed, kissing his cheek and laughing more as he ran to see.

She hurried downstairs, where she found her father, Gideon, Elijah, and the twins all in one room. "A girl," she said, tears still falling in jubilation. "A perfect, beautiful baby girl." She ran from the room back up the stairs.

She could hear the shouts of excitement coming from behind her, and her mother met her outside the door. "Thank you," she said, her eyes dry but filled with joy that transcended any they had found since the Romans besieged Jerusalem. "You were wonderful," Dara said, pressing a kiss to Keziah's forehead.

"I was worried," she confessed, glancing inside the room as she wiped her eyes. Jacob was leaning over his wife and new daughter, and Keziah could still feel an inkling of love—the kind she felt that if she only reached out her hand would brush it. "I don't remember it being that scary when the boys were born."

"You weren't as close to it," Dara said, her lips curving a little. "But it was good for you to be with your sister. I know she wanted you there."

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," Keziah said, the tears shining in her eyes once more. And when her mother reached out to embrace her, both of them tearstained and covered in blood and sweat, Keziah embraced love.

Two days later, baby Miriam was still happy and healthy, but the rest of the household did not fare as well. Keziah would give half her scanty meals to Beulah, insisting that her sister had to stay well so she could feed Miriam.

"Aunt Kezi, I'm hungry."

Keziah looked down at her stale piece of bread, probably the only nourishment she'd receive the rest of the day, and then at her pale nephew. His little hands clutched his stomach. His dark eyes seemed too large for his face, now that it was losing some of its chubby roundness, and Keziah instantly regretted hesitating at all.

"Have part of mine, sweet." She broke off a portion of her bread and handed it to him, trying to ignore the persistent stab of hunger in her stomach.

His face, though wan, still lit up as he beamed at her. "I love you, Aunt Kezi," he said, flinging his arms around her hips.

Keziah felt tears welling up in her throat, and she leaned down to kiss the top of his head. "And I love you. Go ahead and eat that, then go play with Aden, all right?"

Abel nodded. "Okay." He toddled off, and Keziah felt a pang of sadness at the sight of his thinning frame, his clothes hanging more loosely on his body than she had ever seen them.

_Help us, Father. _She glanced out the window, then remembered she was not supposed to stand too close to the windows or doors. She sighed, shutting her eyes tightly, and sending a fervent prayer heavenward as her stomach gave another magnificent roll of hunger. _I feel so trapped. Remind me that You set us free, no matter our situation. Deliver us. Please deliver us._

Keziah sat next to Beulah, who was sleeping, a temporary respite from the horrible pangs of hunger plaguing the entire city. Her face had no color, and her collarbones jutted out at a sharp angle. Keziah swallowed, fighting back the pain she felt at seeing her sister so sick-looking, and touched her forehead gently.

Beulah stirred. "Jacob?" she murmured.

"No, it's me," Keziah said softly. "Go back to sleep; mother is tending to Miriam. Sleep."

Beulah shook her head and sat up. "No… I've slept too long already." She touched her forehead and fought back a yawn, letting her legs hang off the bed. "Where are the… the twins?" she asked through the yawn she failed to restrain.

"With Elijah," Keziah said, brushing back a piece of hair from Beulah's tired face. She sighed. "How long has it been, Beulah? It seems as though we've been trapped in this city forever."

"Three weeks is hardly forever," Beulah said. "But I know how you feel. I can barely stand to see the boys so listless and hungry all the time. I'd give them all my portions if I could, but I have to keep enough weight on my body to feed Miriam…" She sighed.

"I want to go home," Keziah said, pulling her legs up to her chest and settling more comfortably onto her sister's bedroll.

"Soon," Beulah said softly. "We'll all be home soon."

Keziah was frightened at the acceptance in her sister's voice, the emptiness in her eyes, but was too tired to argue. She shut her eyes tightly. _Help, Jesus. Help us all._

The air was hot and still the day Beulah died.

Keziah and her mother arranged her hair for the last time. Her mother wept, but Keziah moved as though controlled by an unseen force, struck into muteness as she went through all the motions, feeling nothing.

There was a numbness in her body that seeped from the outside and covered every part of her. Her fingers moved blindly, and her eyes stared unseeing.

Gideon was solemn and his dark eyes were full of sorrow as he led the family in prayer. His voice cracked more than once. Elijah said another prayer over the still body of Keziah's sister, and she could have sworn she saw a tear fall from the old man's eye and seep into the worn fabric of Beulah's dress. Benjamin lifted his daughter up to the Lord, his voice strong and sure as he thanked God for her life and all the joy she had brought to him and his family. Dara was crying too hard to speak, and Jacob had not said a word since the day his wife stopped breathing.

In her arms, baby Miriam slept peacefully, unaware of the anguish that surrounded her. Keziah held the baby closer, taking comfort in the warmth of her small body—life amidst so much death.

"Keziah."

She lifted her head, and found that the simple movement had never taken so much effort.

"Would you like to say a few words?" her father asked her.

"Jesus," Keziah whispered. "Embrace Beulah and bring her to dwell with You." Keziah's eyes traveled the length of her sister's hunger-worn frame, finally at peace after weeks of hunger and exhaustion and pain. Her eyes were closed, and her body was still… so still. "Lift her up," Keziah choked out, tears falling for the first time since her sister passed. "Raise her from this earth. May she sing with the angels." Keziah bowed her head again, and her tears fell onto the baby she held in her arms, wetting her downy head.

"Amen," the family intoned.

Jacob stepped forward and lifted his wife's body. Followed by Benjamin, the two men left the house to lay Beulah in the _wadi _with dignity, while others had chosen to toss the bodies of their loved ones carelessly into the ditch.

Abel and Aden were napping, so Keziah decided to escape the room to see how they fared. Her stomach growled as she padded up the stairs, hugging Miriam close to her chest. She pressed her lips to the baby's warm forehead, trying to keep from crying anymore.

She stepped into the room and smiled a little at the sight of the boys, but was quickly subdued at the realization that there were three motherless children in the room. She walked over to where Aden and Abel slept peacefully, and lowered herself to the ground as gently as she could, so as not to wake Miriam.

She balanced Miriam in one arm so she had a free hand to reach out and touch Aden's hair. His cheeks were flushed, and he was obviously running a fever again. But always having been the heartier of the twins, Keziah only shot a prayer upward for his quick recovery and deliverance of them all.

She ran her hand down Abel's cheek, then froze. His eyes were closed, and his chapped lips were parted just barely, but there was no breathing to move his chest up and down. Keziah let out an anguished cry and set down Miriam next to her brother before drawing Abel into her arms, sobbing and rocking her nephew back and forth.

"Oh, Father, please don't… no… please Jesus…" Her voice rose in volume and hysteria as she continued her pleas to God for the little boy to live, but she knew that it was too late.

He'd gone home.

The Romans were inside Jerusalem's walls days later. Benjamin and Gideon were gone—they'd left the house to try and find food and never returned.

Dara held her grandson in her arms, her eyes shut as she prayed. Aden was crying, and he kept asking for his mother and twin. Jacob held his daughter carelessly as he paced back and forth in front of the upstairs window. His uncared for beard hung past his collarbones and his eyes were devoid of the life and laughter they once held. Elijah sat and held his head in his hands.

Keziah stared at the wall in front of her, not really seeing. She'd passed the point of hunger, and she felt her body could crumple at any moment, as though her bones were no longer enough to support her body.

She knew the instant the Roman soldiers entered the house, but felt as though she were frozen into place. Elijah rose unsteadily, and Jacob stopped his pacing, crossing the room in one fluid motion to place his daughter inside a trunk. Dara reacted then, whispering to Aden to be silent as she hid him behind a pile of furniture in the corner of the room.

The door burst open, and before a word was spoken, the first soldier into the room had run Elijah through. Dara screamed, and another, younger, soldier crossed the room and grabbed her roughly by the arm.

"Scream again and it will be the last thing you do, Jewish dog," he spat in Greek. He hurled her to the floor and pointed his short sword at her face.

Keziah took a step back as one of the soldiers noticed her and stepped toward her, leering. "Look what we have here," he said.

Without thinking, Keziah ducked under his arm and bolted for the door. He wasn't quick enough to stop her, and a soldier coming up the stairs was so surprised that he actually stepped aside. Keziah sprinted out the front door, as fast as her legs could carry her.

She ran until her legs screamed in protest, and her lungs begged for mercy. Her pace slowed until she was ambling slowly through the streets, littered with bodies. The sun's heat was an almost tangible presence pressing down on her head, but the sky seemed to darken as she approached a burning building.

Blinded by smoke and falling ash, she stumbled, but turned when she heard the steps of Roman soldiers approaching from behind.

"That's the one!" called one in Greek, and their paces quickened.

Keziah began to run, dodging bodies lying in the street and splashing through a puddle of blood. Repulsed, she ran faster. _Help me, Jesus,_ she prayed, urging her legs on. _I will not become a slave to the Roman Empire._

She skidded into an alleyway, choking back sobs as her bare feet pressed into the still-warm flesh of a body left carelessly in her path. The soldiers were closing in on her. A burning on her arm told her she'd scraped it on the wall next to her, but there was no time. She clapped her hand around her upper arm and continued running with what little energy she had left. "Father," she cried aloud, her breath coming in ragged spurts.

She hit a dead end. There was nowhere to go—nowhere but back. She turned slowly, her sense of apprehension choking her.

The four soldiers approached her slowly. Three were familiar, but there was a new face as well: a centurion. Keziah sank to the ground as her tears evaporated. Cold fear washed over her as the centurion knelt down next to her and pushed her ratted hair away from her face.

His blue eyes began to search hers, and Keziah averted her gaze. He tilted her chin. _"Pulchra inter morte,_" he murmured in Latin, and Keziah felt her face wrinkle in confusion.

_Jesus… _she pleaded.

The centurion ran a thumb across her cheek, and the moment seemed to stretch into eternity. Keziah couldn't breathe.

"I'm keeping this one for myself," he said in Greek.

The other soldiers grinned and nudged each other.

Keziah lifted her eyes to his, and for a split second, she felt hatred as she had never known. Then she fainted.


	4. Captives of Fate

**Four**

Justus stared down at the young woman in his arms and shook his head. He was surprised they'd caught her, as fast as she'd been running.

He carried her easily; her frame was thin and hunger-worn. He stepped, uncaring, over yet another pile of bodies. Behind him, he could practically feel Drusus' enmity. True, Drusus had seen her first, but the obsequious, dark-eyed tribune was looking only for pleasure, while Justus had seen her, and known.

This was the girl his father had told him to find.

He knew it sounded crazy—which is why he'd never tell anyone his real reasons behind bringing her back to Rome with him—but somehow he just _knew_. His father said it had been like a voice as clear as any other, instructing him that Justus should find a wife in Jerusalem and bring her home.

That was how Justus had felt when he'd lifted her chin and seen those fathomless, haunted dark eyes.

_She's the one, Justus_, the voice told him.

It was the ultimate test: if the girl survived the march back to Rome, he could make her his wife. Any woman that could surpass the rigors of the journey would certainly be strong enough to bear healthy children, as well as free Justus of having to look after a sickly wife for all his days. He'd watched his father lose three wives in succession—a process which Justus wished to have no part of in his own marriages. He would marry once, and never again.

"Your tent has been assembled, Centurion," said a young soldier from beside Justus.

"Very good, Alban," Justus told him with a nod.

They were passing the Women's Court now. The gaunt prisoners moved about inside, some wailing for lost relatives, some screaming to be released, some verging on death. The bodies were piled high atop a cart. One older woman screamed as she lunged forward and began shouting something in Hebrew at a soldier.

The man laughed and slapped her, motioning for two soldiers that had been standing to the side to get her out of the way as he moved on.

Justus found himself frowning. He looked down at the Jewess in his arms, and then back at the soldiers herding the Jews along. He disliked the cruelty some of his fellow soldiers showed to them. Most were stubborn dogs that had caused nothing but grief for the Empire and all who served it, but Justus found excessive cruelty usually had the adverse effect. Rather than creating respect or submission, it seemed only to encourage feral behavior in return, which meant more trouble for Rome and the men who served her. A firm hand was necessary to show Roman superiority; cruelty only served to undermine it.

Justus roused himself from his musings as he brought the Jewess into his tent. This was hardly the time to become encumbered in philosophy. Such thoughts were dangerous—one did what one was ordered, and no less. It was the way of a Roman soldier, and the way of the world.

IIIIIIII

When Keziah's eyes opened, her entire body instantly protested.

Her head was pounding, her feet were sore, her legs ached, and she could feel the sting of sunburn on her cheeks and ears. She shifted on whatever it was she was lying on and moaned a little. A headache. That would only make things more pleasant.

How had this happened? Where was her mother? But as her eyes focused and her mind began to catch up with the rest of the world, she wished she had not woken up at all.

She was lying inside some type of tent, covered in a woolen blanket she'd never seen before, staring at a Roman signet across the tent.

Her eyes skimmed the tent, but then something rang in her head. A _Roman _signet? She bolted upright, and wished she hadn't. Her head throbbed and she put a hand to her forehead. "Where am I?" she whispered. "Oh, Jesus, where am I?"

The tent flaps rustled then, and Keziah jerked the covers up to her chin, her eyes wide as a young man entered the tent. He was dressed from head to foot in Roman gear, and from the shorn blonde hair, to the signet ring on his finger, to the hardened line of his mouth, he was every inch a proud Roman soldier. But then she saw his eyes and knew instantly where she was.

He was the soldier from the street—the one who'd chased her down, and cornered her in the alleyway. He'd taken her. She was a captive—the captive of a Roman.

Every pore of her body screamed in protest as the soldier crossed the tent in powerful, measured strides and knelt before her. He captured her chin in his calloused fingers, and Keziah felt repulsion fill her.

"So you're finally awake," he said in Greek.

Keziah didn't reply, but instead lifted her hand and removed his hand from her chin.

He grabbed her wrist. "Don't do that again," he said in a low voice. His eyes narrowed in his tanned, sun-lined face.

"Then don't touch me," she said in Greek, hoping she had pronounced the words correctly.

He rose slightly to sit closer to her on the bedroll. "Listen well, little Jewess. My name is Centurion Justus Triarius Appius, and you are now my slave. If you work hard and do as I say, you may become my wife. If you disobey, or cause me more trouble than I think you are worth, you will find yourself in the tent of a lesser man, or lying on the side of the road. Do I make myself clear?"

Keziah understood most of what he said, and fury burned within her. "You foul Roman dog," she hissed in Hebrew. "God will strike you down. You are a pagan, and I despise you."

Justus couldn't understand what she was saying, but her eyes said it in a language spoken by all. The glimpses he had of her in the streets of Jerusalem gave him the impression that she was sweet, quiet, soft-spoken. But somehow he had found a sharp-tongued young woman with fire in her eyes.

Justus swore and let her go. This had been a bad idea. He walked to the tent entrance, and looked back at her once more. Her hair was ratted, her face was streaked with dirt, and he could feel her animosity from across the tent. Everything rational within in him said he should clean her up, take his pleasure, and send her on her way. Make her someone else's problem. And yet—somewhere within him, that same voice from the alleyway spoke in its unyielding, quiet way: _Wait, Justus. Wait and see. She's the one._

"I'll have some water sent in," he said in Greek. "Get yourself cleaned up. We're leaving your god-forsaken city at dawn." He stepped out, then paused and stepped back in halfway. "And… don't go getting delusions of some grand escape. You won't succeed. Do you understand?"

The girl didn't say anything, and didn't move, but her eyes seemed to scream at him.

Justus stepped out of the tent and found himself feeling safer amongst the hubbub of wailing Israeli prisoners and Roman soldiers barking orders and throwing things than he had inside his own tent, with that fiery-eyed Jewess, staring at him with hatred in her eyes.

IIIIIIIII

A young man of medium height with light brown hair and brown eyes brought a tub of water to the tent. He didn't speak, but set the tub near Keziah. He never looked at her, and as soon as he took a quick look around the tent, he left.

Keziah was clutching the blanket to herself, covering her body. She sat still for a few moments longer, listening to the shouts outside the tent. She felt a single tear make a pathway through the dirt caked on her cheek and she wiped it away.

_Don't cry. You must never let them see you cry. _

And sitting there, on a Roman palette with barely clean water in front of her, Keziah vowed to herself that she would never let that cocky centurion, nor any other Roman, see her shed a tear.

Resolve strengthened, Keziah left the blanket on the bedroll and knelt in front of the small tub before she dunked her hands into the warm water. She rubbed her hands around in the water and washed her forearms, then her upper arms. She cupped her hands and pressed the water to her face, then carefully washed her hair, her feet, her legs.

She squeezed her hair, letting the water drop into the now dirty basin and then shook her head back and forth a few times. She braided her hair quickly, then returned to her place on the bedroll.

She sat in silence for a long time, not praying, not thinking, not even being. Every part of her was numb, and she didn't know what to do with herself. It almost came as a relief when the centurion returned, since it gave her something to do.

She watched him throw the tent flaps aside impatiently and stride across the tent without looking at her. He laid his palms flat on the table in the eastern corner of the canvas enclosure and stared down at some Latin writing for a long time.

Keziah took the opportunity to study him. His height was not what made him intimidating, but his broad shoulders, steady gaze, and solid frame certainly did. His brows were furrowed in concentration, and his jaw was firm. Every second she looked at him, Keziah hated him more. He stood for everything that had destroyed her home, her family, her life, and she felt anger as she'd never known it as she watched him

He lifted his head and looked her over. He gave her a little half smile, and Keziah simmered with indignation. She stared back at him, unblinking, and he looked a little thrown off-balance.

When he finally left the tent, Keziah sank back into the covers, pulling the woolen blanket over her head and shutting her eyes tightly. She wanted to escape this horrible Roman world, where nothing was as it should be, as well as the reality that her family was truly—gone.


	5. Defiance

**Five**

"Wake up, little Jewess. There's a long day of marching to be done."

Keziah kept her eyes closed for a few seconds longer in defiance of the Roman's order.

He shook her shoulder again, none too gently. "I didn't come here to find myself a lazy wife. Now get up before I have to pick you up and move you myself."

That did it. Keziah was off the bedroll in an instant, and she shot across the tent, where she stood glaring balefully at the Roman.

"That's better." He smirked and approached her.

Keziah shrank back, then thought better of it and straightened, holding her neck erect. _Show nothing, _she reminded herself. _And certainly not fear. Don't let him know what you're thinking._

The Roman laughed unexpectedly. "I can see you're going to be a trial," he said. "But don't test my patience. It is not limitless, and you will regret it if you make it run out." He touched her hair, and anger welled up inside her before he walked to the other side of the tent.

Keziah waited outside as the camp seemed to melt to the ground around her. She watched the soldiers move about, calling out orders and loading gear. Occasionally one would look at her, but most of them paid her no mind as they hurried past. It didn't matter to her. She was just one more spoil of war to take back to their beloved capital.

She felt her disgust rising. They were killing machines. Everything they did, whether they ate or drank or slept or made love, it was all for one purpose: to crush those who resisted them. It was all done, too, with a kind of cold efficiency that made Keziah wonder, shamefully, if they even had souls.

When his tent was down and his items packed away, the fair-haired Roman bound her hands firmly and mounted his horse, holding the rope in his hands.

The rough twines of the rope chafed on her skin, but even more suffocating was the realization that she was helpless to stop the Roman from doing anything he pleased to her. Her horror must have appeared on her face.

"Fear not, little one," he told her.

Keziah's head jerked up, and her eyes narrowed upon seeing him looking amused. Arrogant swine.

"This is temporary. When I'm certain you're not going to run off on me, the ropes will go." He raised an eyebrow at her and Keziah turned her head forward.

Everything about him disgusted her, from the cool, hard gaze of his eyes, to the signet ring on his tanned hands, to the solid build of his shoulders. The man reeked of entitlement.

Was he—were all Romans—really so arrogant that he thought to claim an innocent bystander as a bride and then treat her as a slave? She would show him. She wouldn't break. She wouldn't bend to his will. He'd be sorry he ever laid eyes on her.

Hours later, the sun lounged high in the sky. Heat rose from the sand below and seemed to pound down from above.

Keziah longed to rest but she never wanted the Roman to see her weariness. Her neck held erect, eyes straight forward, she plodded onward, despite her aching feet and the sunburn creeping up her neck and scalp.

Her face stung with the heat that had been bombarding it all morning and into the afternoon, and she was certain that her cheeks and forehead would peel painfully soon enough. Her mouth was dry as well, coated thinly with a layer of dust, one that continually rose and never fell; her footfalls were too consistent for that.

_Strength, Father, I need Your strength. I can't keep this up for months without You. Help me._

In her exhaustion, Keziah did not notice that the Roman was watching her closely.

IIIIIIII

Justus was amazed. In all his years in service to the Empire, he'd never seen a prisoner so defiant, and certainly not a woman. Yet this Jewess was more girl than woman, as he'd seen once she was bathed. Her face was smooth and free of wrinkles, and there was something about her eyes and demeanor that bespoke a childlike purity that confused him.

She was more than ill at ease in his presence. In fact, her hatred was nearly tangible.

But that would fade with time, Justus thought confidently, once she had been around him for some time and gotten farther from the destruction of her godforsaken homeland. It came to him then, watching her trudge onward, eyes squinting so hard that they were nearly closed beneath the mid afternoon heat—she was the Judean race contained in one person.

The Jews thought they wanted their freedom, thought they wanted to govern themselves and take control of their own lives. Given the opportunity, though, they only argued and bickered like bellicose siblings. They were a factious, fiercely independent people; how could they expect to unify themselves? They were more like the Romans than they cared to admit, for like the brothers Romulus and Remus, they would kill each other if they had to.

In the struggle for power, only those willing to do what must be done will endure.

It was a law of survival, and even the Jews, for all their religious decorum and talk of a just, almighty god, could not escape the laws of humanity.

Justus looked down at the young woman again. Her head had dropped, and he thought could almost hear her strained, dry breaths if he listened carefully. Impulsively, he reached down to untie her hands and pull her onto the stallion behind him, but drew back before she saw him. She belonged to him now, and her life depended entirely on his goodwill toward her.

To make this point, he reached down again and grasped her hands. She jerked away, but he pulled her firmly against the side of the horse, making it extremely difficult for her to keep even the slow, steady pace they had been maintaining all morning and afternoon. He turned her hands over, examined her wrists, then looked back at her.

If Justus had actually believed in the gods, he would have sworn she had been possessed by the mad rage of Mars, such was the fire blazing in her eyes. But instead he recognized it only as wounded pride, mixed with years of cultural, racial, and religious prejudice. No matter, though. Under his careful guidance she would outgrow it eventually, and make a fine Roman wife, one far better than the spoiled, adulterous wenches that populated the capital in this day and age.

But _oh_, how she hated him—and she looked him right in the face too! _Father, really? _He thought. _You really want this dirty little desert asp for a daughter-in-law?_

Justus released her wrists abruptly. She stumbled away from him, one knee dragging in the dust before she regained her balance.

He looked away from her dark countenance, her body shaking with silent rage, unconcerned. He would only make her walk the full day's march for this one day, and then she would ride the rest of the journey back to Rome. He only wanted to test her, not to kill her.

She might want to kill him, though, after all the little tests he had in mind for her. The thought of her trying to strangle him, though, was so comical that his mouth tipped wryly. He wouldn't mind her hands on him, though. He hadn't been with a woman in weeks, and he could easily imagine how much more beautiful she would become once she gained a bit of weight and was dressed like a proper Roman woman.

When the sun began to dip below the horizon, Justus watched the Jewess's shoulders, held erect nearly all day long, begin to hunch in exhaustion.

A tribune urged his horse forward to come alongside Justus. "We've sent out scouts to find a place to camp for the night. There's a river not much farther from here."

"How far?"

"Maybe a quarter of a mile."

"Make arrangements for my tent to be set up on the far end of the camp."

The tribune saluted. "Yes, centurion."

Justus had watched the Jewess carefully for any reaction, and upon hearing that he was going to make her walk as far as possible, her shoulders had tensed visibly.

He gave a low chuckle, and she muttered something.

He decided to irritate her further. "Speak up, Jewess. I don't need a wife who can't enunciate."

She said something in Hebrew, and Justus frowned. "In Greek," he commanded.

One of the tribunes behind him coughed, and Justus turned in his saddle to find him trying to mask a laugh.

"Something amusing, tribune?" Justus asked, raising one brow.

He coughed once more and shook his head. "No, centurion."

"Do you speak Aramaic?"

"Yes, sir."

"Translate."

The tribune now looked uncomfortable rather than amused. "It would burn your ears, centurion."

"Would it?" He looked back at the dark-eyed Jewess, then back at the middle-aged tribune. "Translate a milder version, if you wish."

"Well, no disrespect intended, sir, but I don't think she likes you too much. Apparently she thinks you're a godless piece of horse dung, not even worthy to gaze upon the ruins of the most holy city of Jerusalem."

Justus fixed her with his gaze, but she walked on, ignoring him: head forward, eyes focused ahead, neck held erect. "She said all that, did she?"

The tribune coughed again. "Jews are very succinct, sir."

Justus nodded to dismiss the lower-ranking man, his mind already formulating his next move. "So it would seem."

IIIIIIII

Keziah wondered if she would pay for her hastily spoken words. She thought, but maybe it had only been her imagination, that she had seen a glint of admiration in his eye. But maybe that was determination.

The man seemed more and more determined to break her, and with each act of defiance, she only became more dogged in her own resistance. She had withstood weeks of famine, suffering, and the death—no, the _murder_—of her family by his countrymen. She was not the meek, naïve little girl that come to Jerusalem to meet her husband and celebrate the Passover—not anymore.

Her childhood was over. Now came the time to see if she could survive whatever horrors he had in store for her until she could escape and return to Jerusalem to search for Jacob, little Aden, the baby Miriam, and her mother. She had told herself her family was lost, but thinking that she was the only one left, the only person still living who remembered all the years they shared together, was too painful to bear. Life without hope was worthless. She would find her family, and nothing any spoiled, cocky Roman centurion did was going to stop her.

Once camp was pitched and the tent set up, however, Keziah knew that the Roman was not going to forget her angry comment.

He led her into the tent, her hands still bound, and she simmered with indignation, feeling like a dog being led along. He might as well have tied the humiliating bonds around her neck to complete the image.

He untied her hands once the tent flap closed behind them, standing much closer than Keziah would have liked. She was not about to pull away, though; her skin was raw where the ropes had rubbed all day long.

He dropped the rope on the floor carelessly, but held onto her wrists. Keziah pulled back, and he pulled her forward in response. He ran his thumbs back and forth across her skin, and Keziah turned her head to the side.

"Look at me," he said softly.

She shook her head.

He released one of her hands and tipped her chin until her eyes met his. He studied her for a long moment, but when his hand wandered to her neck, she jerked out of his grasp. He let her go.

She was wondering whether or not she could make it out of the tent and find some place to hide before he sent too many people searching for her, when he spoke suddenly,

"Can you read?"

She turned back to look at him. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Just what revenge was this?

"I know you're a stubborn wench, but I didn't think you were stupid as well. Answer the question: can you—"

"I heard you the first time," she snapped, ashamed at how poor her Greek was.

"I thought so." His countenance was smug, and pleased—too pleased. What vengeance was he concocting?

There was a pause, where they looked each other in the eye. Keziah ordered herself not to allow him to intimidate her.

"Well?" he said finally.

"No."

"No what?"

"I cannot read."

"Nor write?"

Her face flushed. "No."

He nodded. "I suspected as much. Come here."

He walked to the opposite side of the tent. Keziah eyed him with distrust from where she stood.

He looked back to find she had not followed, and frowned. "I said, _come_. I am not going to hurt you, if that is what you think."

She supposed he had had his fill for the day. Romans seemed to take pleasure in others' suffering. She stood out of his arms' reach.

"At the conclusion of each day, I will set up this writing tablet and stylus for you. You will learn to read, write, and speak both Greek and Latin before we reach Rome. I will not have you insulting people in that foul Hebrew tongue. If you're going to endanger your life with that foolish mouth of yours, I want it done in a language people can understand. You may sit down and begin. I will tell you when you are finished for the evening."

Keziah stared at him for a long moment, and upon realizing he was serious, felt dread of a new kind steal over her. So he intended to take her mind as well as her body? The Roman was sadly mistaken; he could not have her. He would _never_ have her.

She sat where he indicated, but did not take up the stylus or even look at the wax tablet set before her. She expected him to order her to do something, but he only watched her for a long moment, then turned away.

"When you've satisfied me, you may eat."

The Roman sat cross-legged on the pallet that was laid out near the tablet and tore into a hearty chunk of bread. "You might as well begin working," he said. "The journey will not last very long. Certainly a short one for learning languages."

Her face burned with a combination of shame and sunburn. This was impossible. This was truly impossible. Clearly the man intended her to starve. _I'll just have to find a way_, she thought.

Defiantly, she picked up the stylus, then set it on the farthest edge of the table.

Keziah went hungry her second night as a prisoner of the Roman centurion.


	6. Off to Sea

**Six**

For the next week, Keziah marched alongside the Roman from sunup until sundown. When he took his evening meal, Keziah did not eat.

Indeed, most of her evenings were spent sitting on the seat he had set up in his tent for her to use while completing her lessons. Well, where she was _intended _to complete her lessons, anyway. Keziah had no intention of bending to the Roman's will, and if that meant going hungry every night for the rest of her life, then so be it.

Though, watching him eat from across the tent was making her stomach ache dreadfully…

She looked away, mentally shaking herself. She would not—_could_ not—succumb to the temptation brought on by hunger and exhaustion. She had gone days without food, even longer without water, watched her sister and toddler nephew die of starvation, seen her relatives and countrymen cut down by the Romans, and ultimately, survived the fall of her beloved Jerusalem. And now he expected her to do as she asked merely because her stomach rumbled every evening after the long day of marching?

The Roman must have had his brain addled by those crimson feathers on his helmet to think she would become weak simply because her city was taken and her stomach was empty.

She clasped her hands in her lap, wondering if she would be able to sleep when he finally stopped shuffling around maps and extinguished the light for the night. What did he do so late into the night, anyway? It wasn't as if they were planning to attack any more cities; they were headed straight for Rome. That was if the soldiers' gossip Keziah had heard was to be trusted.

She turned her head slightly and watched the Roman. He took a bite from a large piece of bread, and, chewing, looked as though he was heartily enjoying his makeshift meal.

Keziah's mouth watered.

He looked up and their eyes met for a split second before Keziah looked away. Her face burned.

When she dared to look at him again he was hunched over his stacks of parchment. What sort of a soldier was he that he spent so many hours squinting at maps, consulting scrolls, and scratching away with some sort of odd writing utensil? The rest of the soldiers appeared to fall asleep as soon as the camp was secure, but this Roman—and consequently, Keziah—remained alert for several hours longer.

Well, the Roman remained alert anyway. Keziah alternated between focusing her gaze on her hands, which usually stayed clasped in her lap, and staring at the Roman, as though willing her eyes to bore through his form and let him feel her hatred. Other times, when she felt her eyes begin to droop from focusing too hard, she would allow her attention to wander.

Sometimes she recalled sunrises and sunsets from her childhood; other times she wondered things about the Romans and their strange ways. The one thing she never allowed herself to do was think of her family, for she knew that as soon as she thought of her father's strong voice, her mother's loving embrace, Beulah's wise eyes, and Abel and Aden's round, happy faces, her façade would drop and she would dissolve into tears.

She often wondered, in those quiet, long nights seated in the Roman's tent, about Gideon, and what her life would have been like with him. Would she have grown to love him, given the chance? She thought of the children she could have borne. Regret stole over her each time she did, for now she despaired of ever having a laughing, dark-haired son or a curious, wise-eyed daughter to nurse at her breast, hold in her arms, set on her knee, and hold his or her hand as tiny feet took their first steps.

Keziah came out of her reverie when the Roman doused the first of the three lamps that illuminated the tent.

Like every night for the past seven nights, he crossed to her and stood over her, as though to inspect the work he knew she had not completed.

He raised one brow (as he had done every night thus far) and said, "Nothing?"

"Nothing," Keziah replied. The first three nights she had looked him in the eye and said it with brazen defiance, but now she didn't bother to lift her head, and the word sounded hollow, rather than angry.

"Then that is what you will have to eat."

Keziah grew weary of the game, but it was too late to concede now. It would only prove that she could be manipulated—and for something as base as a meal!

"Very well."

"You will sleep now."

He rarely asked her questions, only issued orders.

Keziah rose without comment (just like all the other nights), and crossed to her bedroll. She laid down as he doused the second light, and rested her head on her arm as the third and final light died and left them in almost complete darkness.

Outside, she could hear men speaking in undertones, accompanied by the occasional bout of laughing. A torch flickered in front of the tent to allow the men to find their way to the center of the camp. This centurion's tent always seemed to be close to the hub of the camp's activity.

Keziah shifted on her bed and did not realize that the Roman had squatted down beside her until his knee bumped her arm.

She jerked away, and tensed, waiting for him to pull her back or hand down some new mandate from the pedestal he had set up for himself. But after a few long moments, lying there in the dark, Keziah realized he had not moved or spoken, and the change in their unspoken schedule confused her.

Once her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she sat up, feeling better able to hold her own if she could look at his face. His expression did not change.

"What are you doing?" Her heavily accented Greek cut harshly through the silence.

He shook his head and reached up to touch her face.

Keziah frowned, but didn't pull away. Her every muscle was tense.

Finally, he spoke, and when he did, she realized how close his face was to her own. "Tell me your name."

Keziah was taken aback at the order. She quickly hid her surprise and brushed his hand away. "No," she said. Surely the only reason he cared to know was so that he could devise another punishment, or, at least, find some new way to torment her.

"There is no reason to keep it to yourself."

Keziah allowed her disgust to show on her face. "I knew you were a stubborn man, but I didn't think you were stupid as well," she said, throwing back the words he had used the night he informed her she would learn Greek and Latin.

He then did the last thing Keziah would have expected. What she expected was perhaps a stern word, a harsh glance, a warning squeeze to the arm, a forceful tilt of her chin.

Instead, he touched her chin with the backs of two of his fingers, and let the first drift to the bottom of her lower lip. She could barely make out his face in the dim light of the tent.

"What is your name?" he asked, so softly she almost didn't hear.

Keziah swallowed. Now what game was he playing?

"No," she said, and it sounded harsh compared to his gentle tone. He had never spoken so gently to her before. Her head reeled, trying to piece together what all this meant.

His fingers skimmed her jaw line. "Your name."

Keziah's lip curled. "Lucretia."

He dropped his hand from her face. "I assume that is not a Roman name chosen at random."

Keziah lifted her eyes to his. "No."

"How do you know that story?"

"I may not be able to read the letters you and your people scratch down onto scrolls, but I have two perfectly good ears, and I have heard stories from all races of men."

The rape of Lucretia was a well-known story in early Roman history that told of the wife of Collatinus. She waited faithfully for her husband while he was away, acting as the epitome of Roman matron hood. The king—in fact, the last king of Rome—came with the intention of sleeping with her, but Lucretia refused. Determined to have her, Tarquinius threatened to kill her and leave a dead slave in bed with her to give the impression that she had been unchaste. Lucretia relented, but the next morning sent a message to her father and husband, revealing everything to them, and then took her own life.

"And you think you are Lucretia?"

"Not yet."

He took her hand in his. "Do you think I will cause you to become so?"

"You could."

"You think I will harm you."

"You already have."

He dropped her hand and had the gall to look insulted. "Several days of marching and a missed meal hardly constitutes cruelty."

"You think this is about comfort? You Romans truly are dense." Keziah turned away from him.

He was silent for a long moment. Keziah shut her eyes, as though doing so might block out the surge of emotion inside her. Had he no idea what he had taken from her already? And now he expected gratitude. He was searching for it in the wrong place.

When he spoke again, it was in that same gentle tone, almost a like a verbal caress. "Please tell me your name."

She turned her head to look at him.

Neither of them moved. She listened to the sound of his breathing—slow, calm inhalations and exhalations—and studied his features with narrowed eyes. He seemed more human sitting on the floor beside her, rather than strutting about like a cock so proud of his crimson crest.

He had said please.

She finally answered him quietly. "Keziah."

"Keziah."

Her name sounded foreign coming from his lips, and Keziah looked away, the loneliness and hopelessness of her situation washing over her once more.

He rose and crossed the room, laying down on his own bedroll. Keziah could hear him shift about, then become still and take in one long breath before releasing it through his nostrils. She was convinced that he had fallen asleep, until his voice broke the silence.

"Try to sleep tonight, Keziah."

Keziah sat up. "How—"

"I hear many things, even in my sleep."

Keziah dropped her body back down, and rested her head in the crook of her elbow. And, unlike the other nights this madness had gone on, she finally drifted to sleep, thinking of the way the centurion's face had appeared in the dimness of the tent and the gentle way he had spoken her name. It was so soft, she could almost imagine, just for a moment, that he wasn't a monster.

Almost.

They reached the sea midmorning the next day. Keziah looked doubtfully at the centurion as he removed the bonds from her hands and gestured for her to walk up the plank and onto the ship.

"There is a man who will show you where to go," he said dismissively, and gestured vaguely.

Keziah's expression was guarded. "And will our sleeping arrangements change?"

He looked down at her, and his surprise showed in his raised brows.

"Yes," he said. "We will be on a ship instead of inside a tent."

"That is not what I meant," she said through gritted teeth.

He grinned, and Keziah's frown deepened at the childish expression on his face. Surely he could not take so much pleasure in seeing her unhappy, uncomfortable, and uncertain.

"I will sleep on deck with the men." His eyes met hers, and for the first time, Keziah realized they were blue. "You will have a cabin."

"I will?"

"Yes. And you will still be allowed to eat each morning, but not in the evenings unless you complete your lessons. That arrangement remains the same. Go up the plank now. Alban will take you to meet your cabin-mates."

"My—"

He turned away from her and walked off without letting her finish. There was nothing left to do but to walk aboard. Nothing left…

Keziah turned her head to the left and then to the right. The dock was alive with movement; languages she couldn't understand were tossed every which way, and ships bobbed in the harbor, preparing to make their way onto the sea. She was inconsequential in this buzzing mass of activity, and it occurred to her that this might be her only chance to run.

But then a young man was at her side, a Roman soldier, and he nodded to her with more politeness and humility than Keziah had seen in many Jews, let alone Romans. She recognized him as the one who had brought her the tub of water into the centurion's tent her first night in captivity.

"All your things have been put on the vessel. Will you come with me."

It was not a question, but the soldier made it sound like a request, unlike the centurion's non-negotiable orders.

Keziah followed him onto the ship, but turned to cast one last glance at the port.

She could not understand why she had not run while she had the chance. The only explanation she could offer—she cursed herself for her weakness even as she thought it—was that the young man's kind eyes had touched her, and she had wanted to obey him, not done so just to avoid negative consequences.

She drew stares as they walked along the ship's deck; Keziah had been essentially sheltered from the eyes of the other men, but here there would be no avoiding their long looks. Even during the endless days of marching, she had been positioned beside the centurion's mount so that most could not even catch a glimpse of her tired form trudging onward.

Keziah dropped her head as she followed the young soldier below deck. At first she felt suffocated by the darkness, but after a moment her eyes adjusted and she enjoyed the cool, still air on her face after so many days of the sun's relentless heat.

The soldier reached to open a door.

"What is your name?" Keziah asked, and did not fail to see the irony of asking the same question the centurion had asked her the night before.

"Alban, my lady."

Keziah took a step back, shocked. "_My lady_?" she repeated incredulously.

"Yes. That is what we have been asked to call you."

"By whom?"

"Centurion Justus Triarius Appius."

"You mean…" Keziah mimicked the hard line of his mouth and the deep set of his brows when he focused.

The soldier's mouth twitched, as though he was trying to repress a smile, even a laugh. "The very same, my lady."

"I see."

"This is to be your cabin for the duration. If there is something else you should require, I will see to it."

"Thank… Thank you," Keziah managed to say.

He nodded in that deferential way again and turned to walk away.

"But—"

He turned, and his eyes met hers. What kind eyes he had. She felt herself relax just looking at them.

"Has he not told you, my lady?"

"Told me what?"

"That he intends to take you as his wife upon returning to Rome."

Keziah's throat closed. "He told me."

"Very good, my lady." He began to walk away.

"Alban," she called out.

He stopped walking immediately and turned to face her. "Yes, my lady."

"You are very kind. Thank you." She blushed, ashamed of her Greek, which was barely enough to use to get her point across.

"Please send for me if I am needed." The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile, and he turned away from her again.

Keziah watched him ascend to the daylight on deck, and turned to face the door he had reached for, but not opened. She hesitated, then opened it and stepped in to meet whoever—or whatever it was—she would be sharing the cabin with for the next fifteen days at sea.


	7. Companions

**Seven**

The cabin was even darker than the hallway. She stumbled as she entered, and struggled to regain her footing as the ship swayed in the harbor. The cabin's occupants spoke before her eyes found them.

"You must be the centurion's woman."

Keziah had not heard her own language spoken in weeks. Startled, she could only nod.

"Yet you look even more underfed than Tamar."

Keziah's eyes had finally adjusted to the light, and she found herself looking at two young women. There was nothing extraordinary about either of them, but to Keziah's eyes they were the most beautiful creatures in creation.

They were Jewish.

Keziah sank to her knees. "You're…how…"

The larger girl moved to her instantly, cupping the undersides of her elbows and helping her to rise. "You poor thing. You look half-starved."

"I wouldn't write," Keziah said vaguely.

"Oh, of course not. I wouldn't either." The girl who was still seated on the floor of the cabin smirked.

"I'm sorry," Keziah said. "I didn't know… I never expected…"

"Of course you wouldn't. You had no reason to." The girl who had helped her to rise now led her to the other side of the small cabin and lowered her to the ground until her back rested against the wall.

"I'm Tamar," the girl said. She smiled, and Keziah instinctively smiled back. The girl was ordinary until she smiled, but once she did, her eyes lit and her mouth spread into a grin too genuine to be counterfeit.

"Keziah."

"Mara," said the girl seated in the opposite corner. She was tiny.

"How did you come to be here?" Keziah asked.

"I leapt from my royal Egyptian vessel," said Mara, "And swam until the kohl lining my eyes had been washed away, then convinced the Romans I was a sea nymph. I'm to be deified upon our entrance into Rome. There will be games in my honor."

Keziah stared at her.

Tamar sighed. "Oh, Mara, she is clearly not herself. Have a little pity."

"Pity died when the Romans took over the world." Mara's voice was infused with venom.

"We were both taken from Jerusalem after the siege," Tamar explained, ignoring Mara's glare.

"The Roman dogs killed my husband," Mara spat. "I pray El will strike them down. They deserve to suffer, just as I have suffered at their pitiless hands. And you tell me to have pity." She looked upon Tamar with scorn. "You are soft."

"I was, once," Tamar said mildly. She held out her hands for Keziah to see. "My father was wealthy, but my hands have learned to callous since I came to be the Roman's mistress."

Keziah started. "…Mistress?"

Mara loosed a harsh bark of a laugh. "What an innocent you are, little Keziah."

Keziah found it ironic a girl who stood an entire handbreadth's shorter than her would call her "little."

Tamar's eyes widened. "Your Roman has not had you?"

Keziah frowned. "He claims he will marry me."

"And you believe the word of a Roman?" Mara asked.

"He seems determined to have his way."

"But has he touched you?" Tamar asked.

"Yes…" Keziah's frown deepened in confusion.

Tamar saw that she had misunderstood and shook her head. "No, I mean, has he touched you as a husband touches his wife?"

Keziah remembered the way he had run his fingers down her face the night before, the gentle tone he had taken with her, the intensity of his gaze.

"No."

Mara snorted. "I give it another week."

Tamar brought her braid over her shoulder and twisted its fine end around her fingers. "Maybe this Roman is more honorable than most. What did you say his rank was, Keziah?"

"He is a centurion."

Tamar's mouth formed a small "o" of surprise. "You have been taken by a very powerful man."

"I don't care if he is the high priest of Jehovah!" Keziah snapped. "I will run away as soon as we reach Rome."

"Then what will you do?" Tamar asked.

Keziah's face flushed. "I have not decided."

"She doesn't know." Mara sneered. "You will not run from your handsome centurion. I have seen him. The swine who calls me his property reports to him, bowing to commands with a disgusting false deference. He claims to respect Appius, but Romans know nothing of true loyalty."

"Centurion _Appius_ is your captor?" Tamar's eyes had widened again. Keziah half-expected them to pop from her face. She smiled, but then remembered seeing a man in Jerusalem who had lost both his eyes, and she half-shuddered at the gruesome memory. Such memories only served to remind her that she was not a child anymore.

"Yes."

"Claudius respects him."

"Claudius is a fool," Mara said.

"Less a fool than your Quintus," Tamar snapped back, and Keziah smiled at seeing a bit of spirit in the girl. She had a slight slump to her shoulders, as though she was accustomed to submitting. Her large, sloping shoulders and coarse, chestnut braid provided a sharp contrast to Mara's diminutive frame and tight, black ringlets, left to hang about her shoulders.

"I never claimed that weak-eyed Roman was anything but," Mara replied.

"He is in love with you."

Mara snorted. "He enjoys my body."

"And Claudius mine, but he doesn't whisper endearments in my ears and kiss my brow in greeting as Quintus does to you."

Keziah blushed at their open talk. She and Beulah had giggled over the ways of men and women, but that was before Beulah had married Jacob and learned how to please her husband. These two girls knew what it was to lie with a man; Keziah knew nothing.

"Perhaps the centurion is a eunuch," Mara said. Her smile was malicious.

Tamar giggled. "_Mara_, you mustn't say such things!"

Mara looked unconcerned. "Oh, hush. Look at the girl. Her calves are strong and her hips are wide, but her waist is small and her breasts are perfect. She was made to bear hearty Roman sons."

"Her face is lovely too," Tamar agreed. Keziah began to feel like a sheep haggled over at market. "Her features are all balanced, and her hair is still soft, even after the centurion's careless treatment. Are you still having your courses? Even after becoming so thin?"

"Maybe I was always this thin." Keziah lifted her chin defensively. She had thought she might find an ally in Tamar, but now it appeared her circumstance had made her as crass as Mara.

"Nonsense," Mara said briskly. "It is obvious that he hasn't been feeding you properly."

"I eat well enough."

Mara snorted. "Of course you do."

"Are you still having your courses?" Tamar asked again.

Keziah didn't want to answer. The fact that she was still having them had to mean something. The girls were more astute than Keziah cared to admit. Other women in her same circumstance might have ceased to bleed monthly, but Keziah's courses had come on time twice since the Roman had taken her. The knowledge only made her sorrowful; she longed for children that she would never have. Her body was capable, but her heart was not willing.

"Look at you, so suspicious," Mara said. "You act as though we'd run to tell your centurion."

"He is not _my_ centurion. And yes. I still have them."

Mara looked Keziah over approvingly. "Maybe this Roman has an eye better suited to livestock than to swordsmanship and war craft."

"I am not property."

"You _weren't_ property," Mara corrected. "The Romans take what they want, and unless you can bring yourself to the Roman's bed and slit his throat before we reach Rome, your lofty ambitions of perpetual maidenhood are going to be short-lived, my sweet."

Tamar spoke in Keziah's defense. "Let the girl alone."

Keziah didn't feel like a little girl anymore. Not after watching her nephew and sister succumb to starvation. Not after the destruction of Jerusalem. She turned away from the Jewish girls, tired of their talk that reminded her just how alone she was.

"Not a girl much longer, if the Roman has his way," Mara said. She laughed.

"How old are you, Keziah?" Tamar asked, ignoring her sharp-tongued companion.

Keziah pulled her knees against her chest and rested her head on her arms. "Seventeen," she murmured.

"There now, don't become upset!" Tamar actually looked surprised. She stood and crossed to where Keziah sat, taking a seat beside her. "Come now, it could always be worse. We're the same age, anyhow, and I don't look nearly as devastated as you."

Keziah turned her head to look at her. "Your eyes say something different," she said.

Tamar frowned and touched Keziah's hair. "You're a strange girl," she said. "You are very much a woman already, but your eyes are so sad…like a lost child…"

"I _feel _lost," Keziah admitted. "I don't even know where we are."

Tamar shrugged. "I don't either, but it doesn't matter. My Roman does with me what he will."

"And you have resigned yourself to it? No matter how bitter a future?"

"Have you not done the same?"

"No," Keziah said stubbornly. "I'm leaving. I will not live out my life with that pig-headed, stubborn, arrogant—"

The door opened, and all three dark heads turned.

It was Alban, the young man who had shown Keziah to the room. "The centurion wishes to see you, lady."

Mara raised a brow at the title, and Tamar seemed to shrink into the background. Keziah rose wearily and followed him out without saying anything, but she saw the look that passed between Tamar and Mara on her way out of the cabin.

She followed Alban, expecting to go up on deck, but instead he led her to another cabin and left her there without explanation, only a curt bow. She stood near the door, already disliking the sway of the ship in the harbor. She closed her eyes and tried to become accustomed to not having solid ground beneath her feet. She must have stood that way for some time, for when the centurion finally entered, he told her that they had cast off.

"Sit," he said, waving his hand at one of the two seats in the small cabin.

"Is this where you are staying?" she asked, casting a looking around the cramped space.

He laughed. "No. I'm staying on deck with the rest of the men. You are staying in one of the two cabins on this vessel."

"Who is in the other?"

The Roman looked pointedly at their surroundings.

Keziah flushed. "Oh."

"We are using it as a spare to conduct meetings in. We could hardly do so on deck, with a full crew and a horde of rowdy soldiers, ready to be back in Rome."

"I see." As if she cared about the procedures of the Romans.

He looked at her for a moment, then said briskly, "Enough formalities. Be seated."

Keziah looked over at the small writing desk and stool beside it. "To what end?"

"Sit, and I shall tell you."

She looked at him doubtfully, but did as instructed, folding her hands primly in her lap. All of Tamar and Mara's talk about pleasing men had somehow heightened her sense of wariness that she felt in the Roman's presence.

"Here." He handed her a strange-looking object. Keziah grasped it awkwardly. The Roman looked amused. "Copy these," he said, gesturing to a scroll he had laid out, held in place by two stones.

"On what?" Keziah asked.

He gestured to a wax tablet. "This."

Keziah hesitated, then asked, "Why?"

He looked surprised. "I would have thought that all those nights without eating would have taught you I was serious when I told you you were going to learn to read and write. You will not be idle when we return to Rome. It will be easier on you if you learn this now, while there's nothing else to do. You will have plenty to do once we arrive home, however, so I suggest you face the most tedious part of your education now, rather than later."

"My education."

"Yes. You are intelligent, but ignorant. That will not do."

"And why not?" she asked, baiting him.

The centurion ignored her. "Your Greek is much improved already," he said, and knelt down beside her.

"Thank you," she said acidly.

He reached over to adjust her hold on the straight-edged instrument he had given to her, and she gave an involuntary sort of twitch. He raised a brow at her, but said nothing, and did not release her hand until her grasp on the object seemed to please him.

"Copy," he said again, rising. "I will return when we are secure and well on our way."

Keziah spent her first three days at sea copying the symbols the Roman set before her. She woke each morning, spoke little to Tamar and Mara as they ate a simple meal, then Alban led her to the other cabin, where she sat all day, and copied. She had no idea what she was doing, but it seemed that the Roman was pleased with her progress. He said little, rarely touched her, and actually left her alone more than he had for the entire journey, so she did as he asked. Besides that, she was rather guiltily enjoying eating three times each day, and wasn't ready to give that up just yet.

But by the fifth day, she thought the heat and tedium would just about drive her mad. She was wasting her time—time she should have been spending formulating her escape plan once they reached Rome.

The Roman nodded approvingly as he looked over her work at the end of the sixth day. "Better," he said.

Keziah's frustration mounted.

On the seventh day, Alban entered with her midday meal.

Keziah laid down the stylus, whose name she had learned on the second day, and thanked him, as she had all week.

"And do you need anything else?" he asked, as he had all week.

"Some company would be nice," she said. Alban did not seem like the type of Roman who would mock her for such a request. "I have some questions."

Alban nodded, and his posture relaxed slightly. "I will answer if I can."

"What is the purpose in copying these things I can't understand?"

"To acclimate your hand to writing, I would guess."

"But I don't understand."

Alban clasped his hands behind his back, legs shoulder width apart. "I'm not a scholar, my lady."

"Can you read?"

He nodded. "Well enough, though not as well as Centurion Appius."

Keziah must have looked confused, because he continued to explain.

"Centurions must be literate, but the more educated they are, the better their chances of achieving that rank. His father is a senator, lady, so he received the best possible education, and his higher class allowed him to become a centurion at an age younger than is ordinarily allowed."

"What is the usual rule?"

"Centurions must be at least thirty years of age."

Keziah was shocked. The Roman didn't look nearly that old.

"Centurion Appius has, I believe, nearly reached that age."

"He is twenty-nine?"

Alban nodded, and Keziah suddenly felt very young. "What about you?"

"I am a triarius," Alban said.

She had actually meant his age, but she went with it. Maybe learning something about the way the Romans operated in their military would teach her something about the centurion that would help her to escape. "What does that mean?"

"When suffering defeat, the first and second lines, the Hastati and Principes, fall back on the Triarii to attempt to reform the line and allow for a counter attack or withdrawal of the other lines."

"Which means…"

"It is an act of desperation. My position as an officer of the triarii is an honor."

Keziah shifted on her stool so she could look at him more easily. Then she stood. He was tall, but not as tall as the centurion. "Do you like the army?" she asked.

He studied her for a moment. It occurred to Keziah it was the first time he had really looked at her, and she frowned under his scrutiny.

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

He regarded her evenly. "Do you love your family?"

"My family is dead," she said. To her ears, her voice sounded just as dead as her parents, her sister, her nephews.

His eyes flickered. "I am sorry."

Keziah believed him. She swallowed. "It's not your fault." She could hardly believe she was saying that. He was a part of the killing machine that had slaughtered her family, destroyed Jerusalem, and scattered her nation across the empire they had forged in bloodshed.

He inclined his head respectfully to her. "You are kind."

"I'm weary," she said honestly.

He studied her face, and nodded. "I can see that. Would you mind me speaking to the centurion about altering his methods?"

She considered the offer. She doubted the centurion would be able to concoct anything too much worse for her to do than sit in this stuffy room for hours and hours at a time. "No."

"I will do so, then."

They looked at one another for a long moment. His face was more lined than the centurion's, but it was clear to Keziah that he was younger. It was hard to say how old he was (Keziah had always been a poor judge of age), but what made it evident was his smile. She had only seen him do so twice, but the little curve of his mouth reminded her so much of Aden and Abel that it made her heart ache.

"Is the army your family?" she asked him.

He nodded. "It is. It pains me to see any of them suffer. The men are eager to return home, but I confess I am even more eager than they. We have lost too many. They need to get back to their homes and their families."

Keziah frowned more deeply. "What does that mean for you?"

"Solitude," he said.

Keziah was confused by this brown-eyed young man. He claimed to love the army like his family, but he was eager for them to leave him. What an odd form of self-sacrifice he practiced. She reclaimed her seat. "Thank you," she said. "For answering my questions."

He bowed his head to her again, and left the cabin.


	8. Walls of Zion

**Eight**

"I want to go above deck."

"Absolutely not," Justus answered without bothering to consider the request. He fought a grin, looking down at her. She looked furious with him. She usually did, though.

"Whatever for?" he asked.

"Because I can't breathe down here," she said.

His blue eyes searched her face. "Alban tells me you grow weary of your lessons."

The Jewesses' eyes widened, and her mouth gaped open. She seemed to search for words. He expected this delay would curb her tongue, but when she spoke, her tone was harsh.

"Lessons? _Lessons? _Is that what you call me copying these meaningless symbols hour after hour, day after day? I'm sick to my stomach, and it's unbearably stuffy down here."

"You're eating well."

She looked as though she wanted to spit in his face. "I don't care! What is food to oxygen?"

"There is plenty of air down here."

"No, there is not."

Justus looked at her for a moment. She was right, he knew, but he didn't want her anywhere near Drusus, the obsidian-eyed tribune who had been eyeing her for weeks. She had grown more beautiful in the last week, now that she was eating regularly and had gained a little weight. Her face, which had been verging on gaunt, was growing softer, along with the curves of her body.

"We will take a turn on deck, then you will return," he conceded.

"That's not enough."

Justus was surprised. This was the first time she had challenged him since coming aboard the vessel. He considered allotting a certain amount of time each day for her to go above deck, but no, that wouldn't do either. He would have to be with her. Then men had to know that she was his, and there would be no negotiation or argument to the contrary.

"It will have to suffice," he said. "I will not compromise you."

She looked ready to contradict him, but Justus shook his head and covered her mouth with his hand. "Stop arguing. Whether you wish to marry me or not, you are still in my care, and as my responsibility—"

She slapped his hand away. "Your _property_, you mean."

He shrugged, and his nonchalance seemed to inflame her further.

"I do not belong to you," she hissed.

Justus chuckled. "I think you will find that you do, Keziah. Like it or not, there are rules for the way this world operates. Oh, I know you Jews think you belong to another world—children of the kingdom, aren't they sometimes called?—but where is your king now? He can't help you. He doesn't exist. Now let's take a walk." He reached out and took her arm, but she hit him—hard.

Justus took a step back. He was surprised at her strength. He knew she was fast, but he hadn't realized how much a slap on the arm could sting. And delivered by a girl, nonetheless! He was almost too impressed to be angry.

His features remained hard, however, and he grabbed her upper arm and jerked her to him. Her soft body pressed against him, and when she resisted, he took hold of her other arm and held her even closer.

"Be. Still," he growled.

Her face had suddenly gone very pale, and her jaw was tight with fury. "You will burn, centurion," she breathed.

He lowered his head to her ear, and felt her stiffen. "Oh," he said huskily. "I already am, little Keziah." One corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "If you only knew what it cost me to send you to that women-only cabin every night, with only an old army blanket to keep you warm. One day, though… one day very soon…" He gave her one, slow kiss below her ear. "I'll show you what love can be."

She didn't move, but he could feel her shrinking away from him ever so slightly. "You know nothing of _love_."

"Perhaps not," he conceded. "I'm not going to argue theology or philosophy with you right now. But I do know about pleasure."

"Yes, I'm sure you do," she snapped.

He ignored her. "I know _all_ about pleasure. Would you like to learn?" He kissed her on the neck, and was satisfied when he heard her soft intake of breath. "Oh yes, Keziah, you're ready to learn. I see it when you look at me. You don't fully understand yet, but you're curious. You're _aching_ to find out."

She shifted, and Justus felt another rush of success at feeling her heartbeat, faint at first, begin to speed up. His grip on her arms had loosened from a restrictive hold to a merely possessive one, and now he lightly ran his thumbs back and forth across her skin.

"When we dock, we'll be alone." He kissed the place where her neck curved into her shoulder. His cheek was touching her face, and he could feel her clench her teeth. She was ready, he decided, and he was long past.

"I'll get sick," she said tightly.

He pulled back, confused. "What?"

"I haven't been on deck but once in a week. I'm liable to faint if you subject me to all that fresh air."

Justus laughed, but it came out sounding frustrated. "Not to be distracted, I see," he said, as if it didn't matter. "Are you still willing to walk with me on deck? Now that I know your secret?"

"It's not a secret," she snapped.

His grin turned smug. "Oh, isn't it?" He ran the backs of his knuckles down her smooth cheek.

He was immensely satisfied to see her blush as she caught his meaning. She pretended to misunderstand. "I've never made a secret of my hatred of you. I see no reason to begin to do so now."

Justus chuckled. "Don't worry, my beauty, it won't be long now."

He let her pull away from him and walk to the cabin door, but once she opened it he crossed to her and stood in front of her, blocking her way out the door. He held out his arm. "Take it or remain below deck," he said, and he wasn't teasing her this time.

She tensed again, but after a moment stiffly took his arm.

"There," he said, and she looked up at him. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" One corner of his mouth lifted in amusement, and he led her up the steps onto the deck.

IIIIIIII

Keziah couldn't breathe.

Her heart was pounding, and her hands were shaking, and she doubted her knees would support her if she let go of Justus' arm. When he released her long enough to put his hand on the small of her back, to guide her gently up the stairs, she thought she just might just collapse.

He had taken his mind games to an entirely different level, to a place that Keziah could not understand. Truthfully, to a place she was afraid to understand. Watching Beulah and Jacob together had been something sweet, constant, steady, even when they had been married only a few months. Her parents were the same way. Certainly they loved one another, but they were partners, working side-by-side to achieve the same goals, not…lovers.

She had never witnessed raw passion the way she'd felt it in the centurion's hold on her. He had been right when he'd said she didn't understand—she'd never felt like this before.

She hardly noticed the contrast in the warm, balmy air on the deck of the ship to the stuffy, suffocating feel of the air (or lack thereof) below deck. She saw nothing as she walked with the Roman. The soldiers and sailors aboard the vessel stared openly—Keziah could feel it—but she couldn't bring herself to care.

The Roman's hand on her back was gentle in its touch, but firm in its guidance as he moved them around the deck once, twice, three times. He didn't speak.

They stopped walking as the sun began to descend behind the horizon, and stood on deck for a few long minutes, still not speaking. He kept his hand on the small of her back. Keziah realized after a while that perhaps they were supposed to be admiring the sunset together, soaking in the last rays of daylight before they disappeared and the world sank into darkness, but she didn't see anything at all.

All she could do was feel and see and smell the cursed centurion. Feel his hand on her back, his arm brushing her shoulder when they moved. See the strong, solid line of his jaw and the solidness of his hand where he rested it on the deck railing. Smell the sea and the stench of the sailors, and the tiniest hint of him, which didn't smell bad at all.

She hated him.

His arrogance and his good looks and his inhumanity—Keziah loathed the Roman.

Descending back into her prison, he moved his hand so it was closer to her waist instead of on her back. She didn't feel surprised in the least, but her heart beat faster as she turned to face him.

Slowly, he ran his thumb along her cheek.

"I'll retire early, if you don't require my presence this evening," she informed him, infusing ice in her tone to balance the fire in her eyes.

He didn't smile or scoff, just ran his thumb along her cheek again and shook his head. "Don't fight it Keziah," he said softly, and leaned down and kissed her.

At first it was almost hesitant, just the feeling of his lips against hers, but then he kissed one side of her mouth, then the other. As the kiss lengthened, she felt his hand slip around her waist, pulling her into him. And Keziah, who had never been touched by a man, was strangely unafraid. She was less frightened now than she had been when he'd kissed her neck before they went above deck.

His mouth and his hands and his body felt wonderful. Foreign, certainly, but his touch lacked the coolness of his eyes, and Keziah didn't bother to resist.

She didn't feel anything.

Of course there was a physical reaction—natural, involuntary responses to his embrace—but her heart was unmoved.

When he let her go and pulled back to study her face, it was blank. He didn't matter, she decided. Nothing he did to her mattered. She was going to run away as soon as they docked, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He appeared disturbed by her marked lack of reaction.

"Keziah…?"

"Yes."

He frowned. "Are you…"

"I'm very tired. May I retire for the evening?"

Frown deepening, the Roman stepped back, releasing her. "Of course." He opened the cabin door for her. "I will see you in the morning for your lesson."

Keziah closed the door behind her without looking at him.

Mara wasn't in the room.

"Claudius?" Keziah asked.

Tamar nodded. "She won't come back till morning, by the look of him. Like a hungry wolf." The girl smiled. "You know that look well, don't you? It's plain as day on your centurion's face."

Keziah didn't bother to correct the possessive use of centurion. "Mm." She loosened her hair and slipped off her sandals, lowering herself into her hammock.

"Keziah, are you all right?" Tamar asked, propping herself up as best she could from her hammock.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You look…odd."

"I'm tired," she said shortly.

Keziah tried not to see the worry creased across the girl's forehead. "The centurion didn't…"

"No," Keziah said, turning so she didn't have to look into Tamar's worried eyes. "He didn't do anything to me."

He can't do anything, Keziah thought. Not if she didn't let him.

IIIIIIII

When the Romans had laid siege to Jerusalem, pandemonium ensued. Tensions between factions within the city exploded, igniting a war that raged both around the city and in its very streets.

Walking in those streets, ankle-deep in filth and death, Justus had thought about all the fighting and destruction that had opened the gates for them, and allowed them to breach the walls. The walls had seemed so high when they'd first arrived. Many of his men had been under the impression that Jerusalem would not be as impressive as they'd heard. The Jews were always exaggerating what little glory they could find in their ridiculous legends, boasting of their god and their holy city, claiming any heroic figures with even the smallest association with them.

But when they'd finally arrived, the Romans saw why they were so proud of their Zion.

And, looking up at the walls, Justus could tell that several of the untried soldiers were wondering how difficult it would be to breach them. But those walls had been nothing compared to the wall Keziah had erected around herself in the last two days.

She'd been so easy to provoke. It only took a look, a touch, an arrogant statement or command, and her eyes would blaze light black fire.

Now, she said nothing, unless he spoke to her directly. She was almost polite at times.

And, rather than glaring at him as she'd done for weeks, she just stared, with absolutely no definable emotion in her eyes. It was disconcerting, almost, the blankness of her countenance.

"Are you hungry?" he'd ask.

"No," she replied.

"You haven't eaten since early this morning. You should eat something."

"All right. I'll eat something."

He frowned. "You don't have to eat if you're not hungry."

"Whatever you like, my lord." Then she'd turn those empty eyes on him and shrug. "It doesn't matter to me."

He began taking a more active role in her education. Copying only went so far—now it was time for him to explain what all those symbols she didn't understand actually meant. There were times when he was certain she wasn't paying attention, the way she stared at the wall of the cabin instead of at the piece of parchment he was reading from, but then he'd ask a question and she'd answer without hesitation.

"Keziah," he snapped. "Here. Look _here_."

She turned her head slowly, met his eyes, then looked down at where he jabbed the parchment with his ink-stained finger.

"Yes?"

"Can you read this?"

"_Ad pulchra femina curro."_

"Your accent is improving. Slightly, at least. What's it mean?"

"I am running toward the noble girl."

"What's another translation for _pulchra_?"

"Fine."

"What else?"

She seemed to catch on then. Maybe she had caught on earlier, though, and just not made any motion of acknowledgement.

"Beautiful," she said flatly. "It also means beautiful."

He held her gaze. "Correct."

Justus looked away first, pointing to another sentence he'd scrawled on the page. "What about this one?" Before she read, he reached over and took her hand. She didn't react, just allowed her fingers to lay limply in his. Justus didn't say anything.

He would find a way.

He and his men had breached the walls of one of the most ancient cities in the world and taken what they wanted—how hard could it be to tear down the defenses of one little Jewess who had lived there?


	9. Escape

**Nine**

"We'll dock tomorrow."

Keziah didn't answer him.

"Did you hear me?" the centurion asked. He grasped her arm lightly and turned her toward him. Keziah moved passively, lifting her eyes slowly. She tried to empty herself of feeling as she looked up into his eyes, blue as the sea their vessel moved over steadily.

"Keziah." He shook her slightly.

"I heard you, my lord."

"Well then. Prepare yourself."

"How?"

He seemed taken aback. "How what?"

"How," Keziah said slowly, as if she were speaking to a very small child. "Shall I prepare myself?"

He squinted slightly and looked carefully at her face. A hint of a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, and he looked away from her and dropped her arm. Keziah crossed her arms over her chest and watched him impassively. The centurion leaned against the wooden railing of the ship and fingered his _gladius_ where it hung in its scabbard.

"I don't think you fully appreciate where it is we're going, Keziah. For weeks it's just been you and me, and those little Jewesses huddling below deck, and a bunch of restless soldiers. But that's about to disappear. You'll never see those girls again. And all those meaningless symbols I've been tormenting you with? They'll be your lifeline. You will have duties where we're going. There will be expectations. Clearly you do not grasp what your life will be like when we arrive."

"It doesn't really matter," Keziah said.

He raised his eyebrows, looking even more amused than before. "Oh?"

"I said," Keziah repeated, "it doesn't really matter."

The centurion straightened. "Perhaps you'd care to elaborate, instead of parroting yourself in a voice dripping with condescension."

"No, thank you."

The centurion shook his head. "You'll see," he said. "Come."

He led her below deck, but pulled her short of the door as she reached to push it open.

She looked at him with impatience, but he was unhurried as he pulled her close; the rough fabric of her plain tunic pressed against the leather on his chest, and the metal from his belt dug into her flesh. He wound his fingers slowly through her hair, dipping his head and kissing her softly on the mouth. Keziah stiffened, but undeterred, he moved his fingers through her locks, gently massaging her scalp, and Keziah felt herself relaxing in spite of herself.

"There will be all kind of duties to fulfill, Keziah," he said softly, kissing her chin, her jaw, her cheekbone. "Wifely duties." She could feel him smile against her skin.

Keziah felt a flash of longing, a burst of attraction to the Roman, and as soon as she recognized it, the sensation made her ill. What kind of sick woman longed to lie in the arms of a man who had lifted a sword against her family? She felt so far from everything she'd known—everything she loved—and she had no idea how to reclaim anything that was good or right. _Oh, God, where are You now?_

"You were meant to be mine," the centurion murmured.

Keziah wanted to cry.

She tried to envision herself as a silent, icy tower of stone, but as Justus wrapped her in his embrace, she wondered how long she would hold out before she would begin to thaw.

It didn't matter, she thought firmly. God would provide. He would help her find a way.

But as Justus continued to massage the back of her head, his thumb moving back and forth along her neck, Keziah wondered if even God could pull her from the arms of the Roman who seemed so determined to have her for his wife. And as his kissed lingered, something tugged within Keziah, pulling her toward him.

Then she knew.

The closer she moved, the more gently he held her. And as she grew more pliant, more willing, in his arms, he withdrew. He looked at her face for a long moment, and let her go.

Keziah closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

"What's got you looking all lit-up and satisfied?" Mara was huddled in the corner, looking small and sour, her expression pinched.

"Nothing," Keziah said, moving across the cramped space to her sleeping area.

"She has that centurion wrapped around her finger," Tamar said. "What I'd give for those eyes…"

"Those _eyes_ are what got her here in the first place," Mara snapped, fanning herself with her hand. "Why is it so _hot_ down here?"

"The smell of forced chastity," Tamar said, with a wry smile.

"Oh, chastity, my foot." Mara rolled over onto her back and pulled her blouse away from her chest, trying to circulate air. "Haven't you seen them all huddled in the corners? Panting and yanking and gritting their teeth when they think no one's looking—" She broke off with a harsh laugh. "Little virgin's embarrassed."

Keziah tried to hide her blush by turning toward the shadows of the cabin. Tamar laughed too, a little less roughly than Mara.

"Let her be. She can't help it."

"Your time will come," Mara said. She rolled over to face the wall, pushing her dark curls off her sweaty neck impatiently. "You'll see. Yes, you'll see."

Tamar gave Keziah a sympathetic look, but Keziah didn't need her sympathy. Her time was _not_ coming.

Deliverance was coming.

IIIIIIIIII

The morning dawned clear and surprisingly cool. Justus stood on the deck of the ship, out of the way of the sailors shouting and tossing lengths of rope to one another as they floated toward the shore. He hadn't been here in months, and suddenly he felt a burst of emotion. Locked on the ship with the stone-cold Jewess he had pledged to make his wife, he had been cautious, watching her—uncertain. Before that, he'd been in the middle of a campaign, and if there was one thing that Justus did not do when he was making war in the name of the Roman Empire, it was feel.

He thought, certainly, but only in the most mechanical of terms: where to go and what to do and how many men he would take. He planned, always: logistics and personnel and maintenance. He strategized, when needed: every course of action, tactics, and timing.

But feel?

No, that was something Justus did not allow himself to do.

Yet he had felt a tugging toward the furious, dark-eyed young woman who he had claimed as his own. It made no sense, how he'd seen her there, huddled and starving in the alleyway in Jerusalem, and just _known_.

"You'll know," his father had said.

"But _how_?" Justus pressed. "It's madness—it's absolute lunacy."

His father had only smiled, adjusting his toga as he rose from the couch, moving a little stiffly. "Just trust me, son. Have I ever led you astray?"

And so Justus had followed the advice of his father, which he privately believed had been gained from a lunatic, and now he had a woman who would sooner drown herself in the sea than be his wife.

"Don't be surprised if it doesn't go as easily as you think," his father had warned him. "I only know that you'll find her in Jerusalem. That doesn't mean the gods will drop her out of the sky into your arms."

_Easy_ would certainly not be an appropriate description for anything to do with Keziah.

Justus shook his head and stepped aside to allow two overburdened crew members to pass, carrying a huge crate of wine that had somehow spoiled during the voyage.

"Rats," the ship's captain suggested with a shrug.

"Take it for libations," someone had called with an irreverent grin.

And so off the ship it went, ready to be dumped at the feet of a giant, gleaming marble statue of Mars, the belligerent god who had certainly had a hand in the bloodshed at Jerusalem.

Justus felt a sudden longing to see the city. He wished for the quiet, stately rooms of his father's house. He wished for his father's thoughtful gaze and steady hand on his shoulder. For the sound of his sister's feet as she ran laughing through the house. For the slaves he had known since childhood. For the familiar streets of the city—the open air in the forum, the gardens, the fountains, the order.

It had been too long.

Then there it was: _Rome._

Justus smiled. Finally, he was home.

IIIIIIIIII

Keziah was dizzy with the sunlight and the noise and the promise of freedom just wafting before her. The centurion guided her along the deck, moving her out of the way of the preparations for the ship to be tied up. It rocked restlessly in the harbor, waiting, waiting for them to step off. Keziah was waiting too, straining forward to see.

Then there it was: _Rome_.

It stank.

That was the first thing Keziah thought as the centurion guided her down the gangplank and onto Roman soil. She recoiled involuntarily, but the Roman simply pulled her a little closer.

"Don't be afraid," he said, very close to her ear.

Keziah couldn't decide which was more frightening: the flash of desire she felt when his lips brushed her skin, or the intoxicatingly chaotic space in front of her, so full of promise. Justus lifted her up onto a tall, white steed that pawed and tossed his head nervously, a war horse feeling too crowded in the crush of humanity.

When they rode in, Keziah could hardly think over the roar of the crowd. The streets were packed with plebians who had gathered to see the triumphal procession of the returning army. Titus, the Emperor's son, had done Rome a great honor. He'd slaughtered innumerable innocents, ransacked the holiest city in the world, and destroyed God's Temple. Naturally there would be a lavish parade to welcome him and his band of thugs back to the teat of corruption where they all suckled like piglets.

The Eternal City, they called it, but the only thing eternal that Keziah could see was the eternal wretchedness of the human race. They groped and grasped and shouted and clawed their way forward, aching for a look at the loot their ruthless victors had brought home. Some of them tossed flowers from balconies and second-floor rooms. Others held out only their open hands, ready to snatch coins out of the air.

The place was madness. A small girl on foot would be impossible to find.

Keziah took a deep breath. The centurion looked away, lifting his hand obligingly to the crowd.

_Now_.

IIIIIIIIIII

She jumped.

Shocked, Justus sat still for half an instant, but as soon as he realized what had happened, he dismounted and set off after her.

"_Move!_" he roared, his heavy, ceremonial armor clattering as he flung his arms out, gesturing for the citizens who had gathered in the streets to clear out. The streets were packed, and even as people darted out of his way, there still wasn't enough room for him to maneuver.

Keziah was lithe and small and snaked her way easily through the crowd, moving like a sleek fish in a stream. Justus moved like an ox—solid and strong but utterly useless in the water. No matter how he roared and brayed and tossed his head and shouldered his way through the crowd, Keziah just slipped farther and farther from his grasp.

When it happened, he saw it so clearly it hurt.

Time didn't slow. He couldn't see everything. But he could see the worst of it—the procession slowing, and the driver whipping his team to hurry them along. The oxen stomping forward, the wheels creaked heavily, shaking up the dust and filth of the road. The dirty plebian boy bumped out of his place in the crowd.

Keziah reaching for the boy—catching him, tossing him out of the way—Keziah stumbling—falling—the horse blocking her from his view, its rider jerking back on the reins. The horse reared back—the hooves fell—

"_No!_"

Justus shoved two men out of his way with all his might, knocking one to the ground, but he was already too late.

IIIIIIIIII

Oh God – why, _why_ did that little boy have to fall into the street like that? Just as the cart was coming along, rambling faster to catch the procession, its driver uncaring, whipping his team forward. Why did she have to see him? Just as she was breaking free of the crowd. The people were laughing and letting her pass—did they not realize she was a runaway slave? A war prize? A captive?

She had thought this was her moment—that this was the opportunity God had provided for her to get away from the centurion. Yet when she'd taken it, she'd been stopped so suddenly.

_Why_ did she have to see the boy?

She caught him easily enough—jerked him away from the threatening oxen's hooves, flung him toward his mother—but, unsteady on her feet, tripped.

Keziah fell hard in the dusty Roman road, and tried to roll away. The cart missed her, but the soldier riding alongside the cart hadn't seen her. He didn't know she was there—maybe he just didn't care.

She saw the hooves approach at a canter—too fast—why were they all going so fast?—saw the man pull back on his reins—watched the horse's hooves raise above her.

Keziah shrieked and covered her head, and the world went black.


	10. Homecoming

**Ten**

Senator Claudius Triarius Appius had not been lucky in love.

He'd married his first wife to please his parents when he was twenty-two. He hadn't been unhappy with the match, merely lukewarm at the prospect of settling down so soon. Many of his friends declined to marry until later in their twenties. Some married early and quickly divorced the wives their parents had chosen in favor of more attractive, more exciting, or richer women. Claudius had done none of these things.

He had been faithful to Justina, the quiet, solemn seventeen-year old with the thick, blonde locks, and had grown to enjoy her steady presence in his life as he climbed the Roman political ladder. She'd given him a son in their second year of marriage—a boy as fair-headed and serious as she was.

Justina left Claudius as quietly as she had come. A terrible fever swept the city when Justus was still a boy, and his young family had lain ill for weeks. At the end, Claudius and Justus had risen from their beds no worse for the wear, but Justina never quite regained her strength. She caught a cold that fall.

"I'll be better in a few days," she said, sending Claudius and Justus away from her sleeping couch so she could rest.

She died two days later.

Claudius had been shocked at the death of his steadfast, light-haired, _young_ wife. Frightened of his own mortality, he had agreed just months later to remarry.

"That boy needs a mother," an old senator told him, adjusting his purple toga with a knowing raise of his brow. "And you're still young."

So Claudius had married one of his friend's sisters—a warm widow two years his senior whose husband had died fighting rebels in Germania. She'd given birth to a baby girl with a shock of bright, red hair, and had cared dutifully for both her own daughter and Justus until she lost her second child early in the pregnancy and had died from blood loss.

Justus had stood beside him as they carried his wife's body from the house. Barely five years old, he had planted himself next to his father, blonde head up, eyes shining with unspent tears, shoulders back.

"Maybe I'm not meant to have a mother," he remarked to no one in particular.

Claudius, barely thirty years old, a widower twice over with two children, had never been a religious man, but after Marcella died, became deeply superstitious. He consulted soothsayers and palm readers, holy men and oracles. He began to make sacrifices to gods and goddesses whose temples he'd never visited before, especially Juno, the goddess of marriage, and Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home. Convinced his family had been cursed, he guarded his children assiduously, educating them both with fervor. He wanted to give them every chance to find the marital happiness he had been denied.

He was not a bitter man, however—merely cautious.

And so it had been with great skepticism that he took his third, and he swore, his final, wife. She gave him a son—laughing, dark-headed Lucius—before she fell from her horse and broke her neck.

Claudius was finished with marriage. Now his focus was his children; he had given up on finding a woman with whom to share his life. He had his work, his studies, his days spent in the senate. For all his misfortunate, he remained a well-respected Roman citizen. And, most important of all, he had three fine children, each named for the wives he had lost so unexpectedly.

Justus was nearly the age that Claudius had been when he had lost his second wife, and soon to be married if he had listened to Claudius's charge to him before he left for Jerusalem. Marcella, his red-headed daughter, was the same age Claudius had been when he married his first wife—Justus's mother—and though Claudius had been entertaining offers for her hand since she was fifteen, neither Marcella nor her father was quite ready for her to leave the Appius household. Then there was Lucius, dark-headed like his mother, and only seven years old. The boy adored Marcella, and dreaded the day she would marry and leave them for her own house perhaps even more than Claudius did. He idolized Justus—old enough to be his father—despite having seen him very little as Justus had gone on campaign with increasing frequency in the last several years.

Justus had spent very little time at home, but the thing was that he always did come back. And now he had again. Claudius smiled as he stood on the balcony overlooking the road that led up to the villa. His son was coming home.

IIIIIIIIII

"He's here!" Marcella cried, pointing at the dust that rose in the road. "He's back!"

She took off running, her sandaled feet slapping noisily against the marble floors of her home. She was twenty-two years old—a grown woman—far too old to be clattering around the house like a child—but the slaves all smiled knowingly as she sprinted past, wanting to be the first to greet her brother when he arrived. They seemed happy too, though; they were all glad to have him back.

Lucius came darting into the hallway, and the siblings collided.

"He's home!" Marcella exclaimed, snatching Lucius up in her arms and kissing him on both cheeks.

"Mar_cella_!" he protested, wiggling out of her grasp. He was small for his age—people always mistook him for being younger than seven—but he was quick, and easily escaped her embrace, taking off ahead of her. "I'm going to see him first!"

Marcella laughed and followed. "Oh no you're not—_Lucius!_"

She could hear their father laughing behind them as he followed at a more dignified pace. Her pale blue palla slipped from her shoulder and she shoved it back up as she ran. She could hear one of the pins fall from her hair, pinging on the floor as it skittered away from her, but she was right on Lucius's heels and loath to fall behind. A single, red curl fell from her coif onto her shoulder.

They came clattering to a sudden stop in the entrance to the house, both out of breath.

"Hah," Lucius said, sticking his hands on his hips and jutting out his chin. "You're all falling apart and still couldn't keep up."

"Hush, you imp." Marcella laughed and reached out to tousle his hair.

Lucius slapped her hands away and moved toward the doors.

"Lucius—" came their father's warning word. Lucius backed away from the great double doors, looking sheepish.

"Sorry, Father," he said, and the slaves moved forward to open the doors.

Before they could do their job, however, one of the doors burst open and Justus came tearing inside, nervous-looking slaves and soldiers right behind him. They trooped unceremoniously into the house, tracking dust and filth everywhere, filling the entryway with their shouting and stench.

Marcella pushed past a stocky, middle-aged man, finally laying on eyes on her brother for the first time in months. "Justus, what—"

"Father! A physician! Get a doctor _now_!"

He was carrying someone in his arms, still wearing his ceremonial chest plate and greaves, his tall, gleaming helmet topped by a burst of crimson. There was dirt on his bare arms, darkened by months in the sun, and new lines around his mouth and eyes. But what Marcella really noticed was the panic in his eyes – and Justus never panicked.

Marcella moved out of the way as her father skillfully directed the bodies filling the atrium out the way.

"To the room next to the triclinium," he said to Justus, who rushed past Marcella and Lucius without even looking at them.

Marcella stared openmouthed at the lithe girl in Justus's arms, dark hair trailing off his arm. Her face was bloodied and her eyes shut, soon to be purpled and closed even after she awoke.

Marcella rushed after her father as he swept off to join Justus. "Father—" she said, reaching out and touching his arm. "Father—who is that?"

He stopped suddenly and Marcella nearly walked into him.

Despite the chaos that surrounded them—all the shouting and panic—Marcella's father looked radiantly happy. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled, and Marcella could swear there were tears gleaming in his eyes.

"He actually did it. He did what I asked."

Marcella frowned. "Father—"

Claudius laughed aloud and kissed her on the forehead before heading off again to help her brother. "That's his wife."

IIIIIIIIII

Justus didn't understand it.

Watching Keziah lay there, eyes swollen shut, her arms dark with bruises, Justus ached. The girl would hardly speak to him, yet he felt somehow connected to her. His father insisted it was because he had chosen her—or the gods had chosen her for him—and he'd never be rid of her.

"She's your responsibility now," he'd said. "And responsibility is never something you've taken lightly."

What if she never woke up? Just laid there in agony for weeks until she finally, painfully, slipped away to Hades?

He felt sick at the thought.

"Justus?"

He straightened in his seat and turned to find Marcella standing in the doorway.

"Justus, have you eaten?"

Her crimson curls were illuminated by the late afternoon sunlight that came streaming through the window. She moved further into the room, passing by the ornate window hangings. Her hair darkened for a moment, then flamed back to life as the sun lit upon her once more. She sat beside him and took one of his hands in hers.

"You have to eat something," she said.

He examined her face. "You've lost some of your freckles," he said.

She seemed so sad, looking at him there. Marcella squeezed his fingers. "Justus, please."

He shook his head and turned away from her in his seat, tugging his hand away.

"How is she?" Marcella asked softly.

"Gods…" He sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his shorn, blonde hair. "Gods, I don't even know. They say she's improving, but she looks the same to me." He looked over at Marcella. "I can't see her fire," he said bleakly.

"Oh, Justus," she said. She rose and knelt beside him, wrapping her arms around his tense form.

Justus relented and opened his arms to her. He could feel her heartbeat, strong and steady, and it made him want to weep. Keziah's pulse was so faint—like she might slip away at any moment. The burning in his throat and behind his eyes intensified and he pulled away. He would not cry like a child in front of his sister.

Marcella looked up at him and nodded. She rose without a word, giving him only a comforting touch on his shoulder as she walked away.

"I'm sending Isis along with a tray," she said, pausing in the doorway. "Please eat something on it, for my sake."

Justus didn't respond, merely bowed his head again, continuing his vigil at Keziah's bedside. He stayed there as the sun streaming through the window turned to red and eventually disappeared. Slaves lit torches in the long, quiet hallways. The house was going to sleep.

He reached out and touched her hand tentatively. She didn't respond. Her chest continued to move up and down as she took small, shallow breaths. Justus slipped his fingers around hers—they felt cool against his warm, roughened hand.

Justus scooted closer to the sleeping couch and lifted her hand off the couch, holding it close to him. "Keziah," he said softly, and his voice came out much more strained and hoarse-sounding than he had anticipated. "Keziah, I don't know if you can hear me. But I'm begging you—I know I'm practically a stranger—but what happened to you—gods, it's all my fault, and I swear to you that I will take care of you. I swear I'll—" His voice cracked. Embarrassed at the tightness in his throat and the way his vision blurred before him, he closed his eyes, whispering against her limp fingers.

"Just come back. Come back and let me prove to you that I'm a man and not an animal. I will be good to you. I swear—" He broke off again. His chest seemed to contract, and Justus took and unsteady breath.

"Please come back," he finished. Justus kissed her fingers, laid her hand back on the couch, then sat back to watch her for as long as he could stay awake, determined that as long as he could see her breathing, she wouldn't stop.


	11. Marcella's Secret

_Author's Note: Summer's back and so is Refuge! I've only got this thing vaguely plotted in my head and it's changed so much since I started writing it anyway that it hardly matters, so send in requests, complaints or suggestions at will. Also just a head's up, things are gonna get spicy._

**Eleven**

"Father?"

Marcella held back at the doorway of the _bibliotheca_, her father's library, for the sake of decorum. When he didn't answer immediately, her patience for decorum ran dry and she stuck her head in the doorway.

There was no one there.

Well, _someone_ was inside, but there was no one sitting behind her father's impressive, large table ("I had it built inside this room before I moved everything in," he'd told her once, "so the mason's could calibrate the leveling of the boards so nothing would lay at an angle—but only in this room."). He wasn't hunched over rolls of documents, his pen scratching as he worked, his foot tapping when he paused. Yet somewhere in the library, parchment rustled, and someone cleared his throat.

It wasn't her father.

"Hello?"

"Well, I suppose that makes two of us poking around in your father's library while we wait for the man himself."

"I'm not the one poking around, Felix."

He emerged from behind a tall shelf containing endless, painstakingly catalogued rolls of scrolls and crossed his arms over his white toga with its broad, purple stripes, denoting his ability to speak and to vote in the Senate. His smile and posture were somehow roguish.

"What are you looking for, then?"

"Nothing," Marcella replied. "I only stepped in the doorway. I wasn't sneaking behind shelves and pulling scrolls from their places. Father's not available. You should probably leave."

"Why, then," Felix asked, dropping his arms and coming closer, "would you come here looking for him if you already knew he was unavailable?"

"None of your business."

"I'd like to make the things you do my business again, Marcella." He stopped in front of her. He was standing close enough that it felt like he was leaning toward her—over her, almost—drawing her in. His scent was familiar and seductive, and she withdrew.

"That was a long time ago."

"Not _that_ long," he said softly, reaching for her hand.

"Long enough," Marcella said more sternly, moving away.

"_Too_ long."

"Oh, make up your mind, Senator," she snapped. "Which is it? Not long ago or too long ago?"

"Both."

"Your inanity never fails to amuse."

"And those eyes never fail to drive me mad."

Oh by the _gods _Marcella hoped she wasn't blushing. She dared not touch her face to feel if it was warm. She couldn't tell by feel. He didn't comment on her color, though, which reassured her, because he had always enjoyed teasing her when he managed to make her blush.

"I really did come to see your father on business," he said. "But seeing you again—gods, Marcella, it's more than a man can stand. You look wonderful."

She tried to be conversational and casual. Maybe she could start walking towards the doorway and he'd follow her out. "I've taken up swimming, much to Father's chagrin."

He hated it when she circled the large fountain in the gardens, frantically kicking her legs as her arms pulled her smoothly, steadily through the water.

"I had it built that way for the fish, Marcella," he'd said dryly, "Not so my daughter, long overdue for marriage, could splash in it like some kind of slave child seeing the sea for the first time."

But _oh_ the water was positively Elysian and otherworldly in its goodness. It slicked over her body and provided the only relief from the dreadful, late summer heat. In the pool she felt slippery and sensual. She was cool. She was weightless. She was _free_. The water closed over her ears and blocked out the trivialities of her world and the decorative fish darted, annoyed, out of her path.

She had moved toward the doorway and Felix followed. Perhaps her less-than-subtle plan to eject him would succeed after all.

"I could tell you've been spending more time in the sun. These freckles are delicious." He reached out and caressed her arm. "It's like cream with spots of sunshine."

"Ever the poet," Marcella said dryly. She let him touch her arm, slipping his fingertips lightly over her skin, then pulled away. She held still for a moment, looking him in the eye, but then she gave in and scratched where he had touched.

"Tickles?" he asked. His mouth curved into that same sensual half-moon that had driven her right into his bed two years before.

"So smug," she said.

"Less smug and more pleased that you are mostly the same as you were."

"I'm not," Marcella said, fixing him with the sternest gaze she could muster. "I am not the same child you seduced in the garden that night."

"No, you're not," Felix agreed. "You've grown up a bit since then. You're beginning to chafe under your father's rule, aren't you?"  
"No more than I'd chafe under the thumb of a husband."

"How did you know I was going to ask again?"

"Because you always ask, Felix. In that tireless, tiresome way of yours, you _always_ ask."

"And the answer is unchanged."

"Yes," she said. "My answer is unchanged."

He should have moved away from her then, but he came closer instead. Maddeningly, she felt her heart beat just the barest bit faster. "They won't let me wait forever, you know."

"Then marry that little chit who is always following you around at banquets like a mongrel begging for scraps of your affection."

"Marcella." His voice was warm and infuriatingly tempting. "You know that's not for me."

"And marriage isn't for me." Somehow her voice still sounded relatively sane in her ears.

He regarded her closely then nodded. "We'll see," he said. "We'll see about that." He clasped her upper arms and squeezed lightly as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. He moved away and offered a slight bow from the hallway. "Good evening, Lady Appius."

"Senator."

When he was gone she turned away and leaned against the wall of the _bibliotheca. _

_Breathe_, she coached her respiratory system. _Just calm down._

By the gods, he was just as beautiful as ever.

Marcella had been quite taken with Senator Felix Festus Octavius when he first donned his white and purple-striped toga at age twenty-six, making him the youngest senator at the time. She was only thirteen, a pale, gawky, frizzy, little redhead tired of her father hosting parties in their villa. They had already hosted three huge blowouts that month, and all she wanted was a quiet evening at home where she could sit on the little stool in the _bibliotheca _and study beside her father.

"But _Father_," she moaned, "you hardly know him. He's practically a child of a senator, isn't he? Do we have to have the party _here_?"

"I knew his father," he said. "We worked together closely. That family has been good to ours, though you may not have seen it. The least we can do is to celebrate the boy's appointment to the Senate in style. You'll like him, Marcella. He's as unconventional as you are." He tugged one of her incorrigible crimson curls and she sighed.

"Oh, all _right_."

"You and I will have the library to ourselves tomorrow night," her father assured her.

Marcella wore her best toga and a scowl to the party.

She followed her father around, barely acknowledging even her father's favorite colleagues as an act of childish rebellion.

"You certainly have your hands full with that one," one elderly man remarked. He chuckled, clasped hands with her father and moved away.

"Would it really cost you so much to at least pretend to be bored instead of outright hostile?" her father asked her as they moved across the garden.

She shrugged and looked away in the classic, noncommittal rudeness that all adolescents seem to possess. They came up to a group of young women crowded around a senator. From behind, Marcella could see his authoritative stance, the powerful line of his shoulders, the way the women preened and smiled up at him.

"Ladies," her father cried, "if I may."

They fluttered away reluctantly, casting longing glances over their shoulders toward the young senator.

Felix turned and his face split into a wide, genuine grin at the sight of her father. "Senator Appius—sir." They clasped hands and pounded one another's backs in a quick, masculine hug.

"And this must be the lady of the house," he said. He offered Marcella a neat little bow.

"She is indeed—and none too pleased about the following you've brought with you." Claudius raised his eyebrows in the direction of one of the groups of women who had clearly only come to the party to fawn over the handsome new senator.

Marcella's scowl darkened.

Felix was not cowed by one moody teenage girl. "I can see I'll just have to court her. Prove my worth over time. She is as stubborn and discerning as her father."

Claudius laughed. "She's more her mother than me, but you're right—she won't be won by quick flattery."

"I'll wait, then," Felix said, loosing another one of those broad smiles.

And he had.

At every opportunity, he came to the villa to ask her father for advice on matters of state. Eventually Claudius added Felix to the guests who came frequently to their home for small, informal dinner parties. He always engaged Marcella in conversation, doted on baby Lucius, and spoke to Justus when he was home from training or some campaign. Eventually Marcella grew rather fond of his teasing, and began to confide in him.

"A little girl with big ideas," Felix told her once. It was the kind of comment she would have hated from anyone else, but when Felix said it there was no condescension in his gaze. He listened to her the way her father did—like what she said mattered. He considered her opinions, asking her to elaborate on those that he found interesting. But he was honest as well—he didn't flatter her when she was childish or silly, and he'd argue with her as soon as agree with her.

Marcella was soon as enamored with his intellect and charisma as she was with his looks.

Then, when she was fifteen, she blossomed.

No longer the pale, scrawny, loud-mouthed daughter of a Senator, she was suddenly a very, _very_ viable candidate for marriage. Her untamable hair finally settled around her forehead in a comely fashion, and the way the curls sprang from her pins was sensual rather than unkempt-looking. She sprouted hips and walked unconsciously with a womanly sway to her movements, rather than the boyish way she'd once barreled around the world. Her breasts grew, and her maids had to adjust the way they tied her into her tunics so she wasn't bursting out of the tops.

Men began to look at her differently. Her father's colleagues no longer indulged her like a small child, but eyed her speculatively with secret smiles she didn't understand. Marcella hated it.

Felix was unchanged.

He still came to their home as often as ever, and treated her with the same regard as he had when she was a terrible thirteen-year old girl with too many opinions and not enough people to listen to them. His eyes never dipped below her face in a manner differently than before. He complimented her when she wore new jewels or the color of her _palla_ seemed to suit her, but his compliments were as platonic and polite as ever.

At first Marcella only liked him all the more for it, but as she grew accustomed to all the new, sometimes overwhelming, male attention, she found herself wishing that Felix would notice her that way too.

But he never did.

When she was seventeen she cornered him after dinner while the others were leaving the dining room.

"Why don't you notice me?" she asked angrily.

"I do notice you, Marcella," he said, looking surprised.

"No, I mean like a woman. Not like some child you indulge."

"You've grown into a lovely young woman, Marcella," he said. He seemed uncomfortable. "Of course I've noticed."

"Then—well, then why haven't you _done_ anything?"

Just last month a young man campaigning for political office had come to dinner at their villa. While the others exited the room, he caught Marcella's hand and pulled her back.

"Lady Appius—I know it's very forward, but I've been watching you all evening. And gods—I just—" He caught her up in his arms and kissed her. "You taste as good as you look," he said into her ear.

Completely at a loss, Marcella fled the room and caught up to her father, red-faced and watery-eyed, humiliated by her curiosity and raging hormones. The man had apparently had made an offer for her hand later that night.

He did not come to any more dinners at the villa. Marcella could only assume his political aspirations were equally unsuccessful.

Now Felix was just inches away from her, his hands clasped politely behind his back.

"What should I have done?" he asked her.

"You've never feigned stupidity with me before," she responded sharply. "I see no reason to begin now."

"My sweet friend—"

"I don't want to be your _friend_!" she cried, stomping her foot in childish frustration.

He leaned forward and pulled away suddenly. Letting out his breath, his cautiously pulled her into his arms and hugged her gently. "Let it be, Marcella," he said into her hair. "Just let it be."

Marcella cried herself to sleep that night, baffled by her sorrow and longing. She didn't speak to him for weeks, and the next time a young man cornered her alone at a banquet, she slipped her hand into his and followed him into an unused bed chamber.

Felix saw her with Maximus about a month after their love affair began. Marcella slipped a date into Maximus's mouth, giggling when he nipped at her fingers. When she looked up, Felix was standing nearby. He downed the remaining wine in his goblet and walked up to the pair.

"Lady Appius."

"Senator."

"I don't believe I've met your friend."

Marcella smiled. "Oh, I don't think now is really the time, Senator. Maximus was just telling me the most _interesting_ story, weren't you, Maximus?"

Maximus looked between the two of them. "I—"

"Well, you see," Marcella continued, "the thing about the story is that the ending is rather a secret. So we were just going over there so I could hear the end of the story. You and I will have to catch up later." She linked her arm through Maximus's and practically dragged him away from where Felix stood clutching his goblet till his knuckles turned white.

She saw little of Felix over the course of the next year. She eventually began to see less of Maximus as well, and he took another lover and they stopped seeing one another altogether. Marcella was indifferent.

One evening at a mutual friend's birthday party, Felix got very drunk and found Marcella wandering alone in the gardens. "What are you doing?"

"Taking a walk," she said, taken aback by his aggressiveness.

"Alone?"

"I'm hardly alone, Senator—the gardens are full of illicit meetings and teenagers humping like dogs in heat. Well, not all of them are teenagers." She gave a wry smile.

"It's not good," he said, shaking his head. "Is'not good. I don't like it."

He had raised his voice; his tone was heated. Two men passing stared at them. Marcella nodded in acknowledgment and they kept moving.

"It's not good, Marcella—he—that one in there—_he's_ not good."

"All right, Felix, shh—"

"Don' _shhh_ me!"

"All right, all right, I wasn't shushing. Come on. It's time to leave."

"Yes," Felix said. His frown deepened. He stumbled a bit as they began to walk back toward the house. "Yes, you won't leave with _him_."

Marcella rolled her eyes. Felix stumbled alongside her until they were back to the house, where his attending slave caught up to them and came to his side.

"I'm going to tell my father I'm leaving," Marcella said. "Wait here." She looked at the slave and he nodded.

Marcella passed through the room, catching one of her friends by the hand. "I'm going home, Aurelia," she said. "Give my best to your father."

"Oh so early!" her friend exclaimed. "You're getting to be such a bore, darling," she sighed. Her eyes glinted and she leaned in closer. "It's time you took another lover. Shook things up."

The girls giggled together and Marcella shook her head. "_Goodnight_, Aurelia."

"Oh, goodnight, Marcella. I'll see you later this week?"

"Shopping on Thursday—yes, of course." She kissed her cheek and hurried on, pulling her _palla_ around her shoulders.

Marcella found her father in the next room over, talking business as usual.

"Father?" Marcella caught his elbow and he leaned closer so she could speak quietly in his ear. "Felix isn't well. I'm going to walk him to his litter. I'll meet you at home."

He nodded. "Very good. Take Isis with you."

Marcella gestured for their house slave to follow and with the help of Felix's body slave, led him relatively undetected to where his litter waited outside. Only the two of them would fit.

"Just go home," Marcella told Isis, dismissing her with a wave of her hand. "I'll be home in an hour, once he's settled."

"Yes, my lady." The dark-eyed slave evaporated and Marcella climbed into the litter with Felix. He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled his knees up, resting his forearms on his legs. He didn't touch her or look at her while they rode in the litter.

"Felix?" she ventured.

He covered his mouth.

"Felix, are you going to be ill?"

He didn't answer her.

Marcella sighed and looked away. "Fine," she said. "Vomit all over yourself. See if I care."

"Of course you don't care," he said. His voice was muffled under his hand. "You're just waiting till you can run back to _him_."

"Him _who_?"

"That puppy dog everyone knows you're sleeping with."

"Maximus and have been through for a while. We both moved on."

He dropped his hand and stared at her long and hard. "Why did you ever bother?"

Marcella came up with half a dozen angry, defensive, snappy remarks, but she didn't voice any of them. She didn't know if it was because he was so drunk that she thought he wouldn't remember anyway. Maybe it was because she just wanted him to know after all those months of awkward, cool silence. Whatever the reason was, she told him the truth.

"Because you said no," she said. "I was with Maximus because you said no."

He looked away and did not speak again until the litter stopped. He hopped out and fell on the cobblestones that led up to his villa. Marcella slid out after him and tried to help him up, but he pushed her away. He let one of the slaves pull him to a standing position and tripped twice on the way inside.

Once there, Marcella drew her _palla_ more tightly around her shoulders. "There. Home safe and sound. Goodnight—"

He caught her by the hand and pulled her back.

"Felix, _really_—"

"You slept with that pup because I told you no?"

"Wha—Felix, I—"

"_Answer the question, Marcella._"

"Gods, Felix, you reek—"

He yanked her into his arms and kissed her. There was no tenderness, only raw _need_. Passion. Heat.

She melted.

When he pulled away he wound his hands in his hair and forced her to look up at him. "Answer me. Did you really go running off to someone else because I told you no two years ago?"

She wanted to nod and couldn't, but oh—Juno have mercy—she couldn't speak either. The words stuck in her throat. Her heart pounded helplessly in her chest, and she knew he could feel it, the way he was crushing her to his body.

"Yes," she finally managed to say.

"Do you still want me?" he asked her. "Do you still want me now?"

"Yes," she whispered, and before she had time to think he had swept her up in a clumsy embrace, lifting her so her toes dangled above his polished marble floors, and stumble-carried her to his bedroom.

"Now then," he said. "Now, before you change your mind."

"Felix—"

He kissed her again, but softly this time. His lips barely touched hers, and he held her face in his hands to keep her from surging forward. He was torturing her, making her wait, holding back, nipping at her bottom lip, sucking on the top one. She was trembling.

"Like a dream," he whispered. "Like all the dreams I ever had about you."

Somehow she managed to pull off both his toga and her own, unwrapping and unpinning until they dropped to the ground. They tripped over them as they kicked away their sandals and fell into bed. They were ready for each other, and his body found hers and fitted to it without hesitation. Once he was inside her, he stopped, savoring the moment, filling her up, possessing her entirely.

"Oh Marcella," he breathed against her skin. "Sweet, beautiful, wonderful Marcella…"

He made love to her sweetly, clumsily, carefully and fell asleep afterwards with her curled up beneath one of his tanned arms.

She left the house before dawn and appeared at breakfast as fresh-faced as someone could be after staying up late at a party. She bantered with five-year old Lucius and her father didn't appear to suspect a thing.

It lasted eight passionate, intoxicating months. Marcella was breathtakingly happy, caught up in Felix's experience and ardor, obsessed with when she would see him again. At first it was simple. All Marcella had to do was attend official functions with her father. She mingled long enough to be seen and remembered, then slipped away unnoticed to meet Felix in some secret corner where they could be alone.

And _oh_ did it feel like they were alone.

She forgot everything when they were together. She thought it was a cliché about love that the poets had invented, but with Felix it was true; the world literally seemed to melt away when she was in his arms.

Marcella had enjoyed sex with Maximus, but the difference between making love to Felix and making love to Maximus was like the difference between the sensuous crush of a grape between your teeth after you'd been in the sun all day and eating a grape in the midst of a large banquet. With Maximus, sex was just one of the many pleasures that filled her life: pleasant, transient, nothing out of the ordinary. With Felix, it was like a craving she could never satisfy. It was delicious, overwhelming, all-consuming.

Their affair had not ended because Marcella wanted it to. Neither of them had become engaged. They had not grown born or restless or found other lovers.

Her father had almost found them out.

Marcella believed that Claudius would have been happy to give his daughter's hand to his favorite junior senator. He would not have been pleased to find them entwined in his "virgin" daughter's bed.

They had grown reckless.

Marcella's toga was pushed up to her waist, Felix's hand fondling her breast, her back pushed up against the wall. She was breathing hard, helpless, he was going to take her right there and right then, and—

"Marcella? Marcella, are you there?"

They froze.

"_Go,_" Marcella mouthed.

Felix looked at her, helpless. She pushed him away, dropped her toga, tried to straighten her hair, snatched her _palla_ off the ground. Felix was still looking at her. "_Now_," she hissed.

He turned and ran like a scared teenager instead of the grown man—a senator of Rome, for gods' sake—that he was.

Her father rounded the corner and Marcella pasted a smile on her face.

She had been pretending ever since.

IIIIIII

Justus thought he imagined it at first.

He stared harder, willing himself not to blink until—gods, there it was again. Her eyes fluttered—Keziah was waking up—she was going to be all right—they were going to be married—she wasn't going to hate it—it was going to be—

She was crying.

Softly, carefully, but definitely crying.

She began to moan. At first he thought it was just the inhuman noises of pain, but then he realized that she was speaking Aramaic.

"Keziah," he breathed. "Keziah, it's all right—don't—oh _gods_, please don't cry."

Her voice was scratchy and hoarse.

"I can't…" He felt utterly helpless. "I can't understand you."

"It hurts," she managed to say. "Oh, Jesus, it hurts."

The burning in Justus's throat started again and he knew if he didn't do something he'd be crying right alongside her in minutes. He lifted her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm, and set it down. "Just wait. Just a moment. I'll get someone."

He made it to the doorway and called to the house slave who waited nearby. "Bring that herb the physician said would help," he said urgently. "She's woken up. Hurry."

He rushed back to her side, clutching her hand again.

"I'm here," he told her. "Keziah—"

Her eyes fluttered. She moaned, and fainted.

Justus swore foully and rushed back to the hallway, nearly colliding with his sister.

She took in his wide eyes and agitated movements. "Justus—what—"

"Keziah woke up. She woke up but she's passed out again. Find father. Find someone."

"I was just looking for father. I'll keep going. I'll find him. Go back inside."

She glided away in a flash of red curls and blue toga and Justus went back into Keziah's room. The slave had brought the medicine, but Justus didn't think it would do her any good if she was awake. "What do we do?" he asked. "What do we do to help her?"

"I don't think there is anything else to be done tonight, my lord," the slave answered. "Not according to what the physician has told us, at least. Nothing more than you've already done for her. We can stay at her side, and watch. All we can really do is wait. It is in the hands of the gods."

Wait. Of course.

Justus sank back onto the small three-legged stool where he had been waiting and watching all day. She would wake up again. She _had _to.

She had to wake up.


	12. Ghost

_Author's Note: Found a bunch of discrepancies from the early chapters but I don't have the updated ones anymore because I had a catastrophic hard drive crash back in October. HOWEVER, due to the three lovely reviews I have received, I took the liberty of going back and updating them all and adding some atrociously obvious chapter names. Updated today because 'Merica. Happy reading!  
_

**Twelve**

The smoke in the streets of Jerusalem made it hard to breathe.

There was something in her throat and Keziah was coughing, trying to lift her arms to push whatever was intruding away from her, but it just kept filling her throat and it was becoming impossible to breathe. Oh, _Jesus_—make it stop—_make it stop_—

IIIIIII

"Easy," Marcella murmured, tipping the water into the girl's throat again. "Shh… Just a little…just drink a little… I promise it will make you feel better…"

Justus had finally fallen asleep at his post after staying awake for a day and a half straight, just sitting at Keziah's side, clutching her hand like it was a lifeline thrown to a man drowning at sea. Marcella had found him there, head back, mouth hanging open, sound asleep at his appointed bride's bedside.

The Jewess had roused only an hour before but fallen back into unconsciousness. Now she was stirring again, and the physician had said that she ought to drink something as soon as she woke up. Marcella kneeled beside the girl's bed and lifted her slightly—it wasn't difficult—she was _so_ thin—tipping the cup of water to her lips.

She swallowed a little, but she was resisting, coughing and letting the water dribble down her chin.

"Come on," Marcella cooed. "Just water. It's just water…"

IIIIIIII

The smoke turned to liquid and Keziah felt the tightness in her throat begin to loosen. She managed to swallow—once, twice, a third time.

She was back in the house in Jerusalem, reclining at dinner with her parents. Beulah was there, but she was confused because her sister still looked pregnant but she was holding baby Miriam in her arms. Keziah frowned.

"How old is she?" Keziah asked.

"Who?" Beulah asked.

"The baby," Keziah said. "How old is Miriam?"

"More water," her mother was saying. "You should drink more water."

Keziah tried to swallow, but her throat felt tiny, and the torrent of water was overwhelming.

IIIIIIII

Marcella glanced over her shoulder and found Lucius standing in the doorway. He had one foot inside the room, the other poised to run should he be discovered.

"It's all right," she said, coaxing him to come in while coaxing Justus's bride to drink at the same time. "Here. Sit beside me."

Lucius sank quietly onto the stool, folding his hands awkwardly in his lap. He was almost perched on the edge of the seat, as if he was afraid that he'd frighten her with his diminutive presence.

Marcella tipped more water down the girl's throat and she managed to swallow. "Good," Marcella cooed. "Very good."

The little Jewess was muttering something, which was making it hard for her to drink. "Shh," Marcella said. "Hush…just drink…"

"She's very skinny," Lucius whispered.

"She is," Marcella agreed.

"How long since she's eaten food?" he whispered again.

"I'm not sure," Marcella said. "It has to be almost a week. If she doesn't eat something soon she's going to be very, very sick." She eyed the girl's swollen, blackened eyes and glimpsed her bandaged ribs and arms where the blanket had fallen away from her chest when Marcella had propped her upright. "Sicker than she already is anyway."

"I can't believe that horse did not kill her," Lucius whispered.

Marcella smiled in spite of herself. "You don't have to whisper, you goon," she said to him. "It's not going to bother her for you to talk out loud, as long as you're not clattering about like the hoodlum you are."

She almost got a smile out of him.

"All right," he said in a slightly more normal tone of voice. He glanced over at his big brother where he was still snoring. "Should we wake Justus? He'll want to see her. She's sort of awake."

"He was here earlier when she roused," Marcella said. "And he'll be pleased if he wakes and she looks better than she did half an hour ago, when I first saw her." She shook her head. "Like a sick baby bird."

"What's she saying?" Lucius asked.

"I can't tell," Marcella said. She shook her head and scooted a little closer, shifting her weight so she didn't have to bear so much directly on her knees. "Every time I make out a word I think it has to be Hebrew, or Aramaic. Not much Greek or Latin from this one. Do you think she even speaks them?"

Lucius shrugged and dropped his face into his hands, supported by his elbows on his thighs. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know anything about the Jews. I've only heard that they're really bloodthirsty but Father says not to believe the things you hear them saying in the _agora_, so that's all I know. Which isn't really anything."

Marcella 'mmhmm'ed vaguely; she hadn't really been looking for a response so much as she was just wondering aloud.

"I'm worried for Justus," she said.

"Me too."

She looked over at Lucius, who was watching the malnourished Jewess intently with his round, dark eyes. "Why's that?"

"'Cause he's not eating much," Lucius said simply. "He's been home a week and hasn't even touched that special cake that Isis always makes. Normally he sneaks into the kitchen when he thinks no one is going to notice and eats the extra ones."

Marcella glanced over at her serious (still snoring) half-brother in surprise. "Truly?"

Lucius nodded and grinned. "I caught him last time, before he left for Jerusalem. He gave me one and made me promise not to tell. Don't tell, okay, Marcella?"

"The secret is safe with me," she said.

Justus snorted suddenly and woke himself up. His head jerked forward and it took a moment before his eyes cleared and he took in the scene before him: Marcella propping up his emaciated bride, tipping water between her parched lips, Lucius at her side, leaning close and watching.

Justus seemed afraid to move, afraid to startle the girl and send her spiraling back into interminable unconsciousness.

"It's all right," Marcella coaxed him.

"When—"

"She woke up a few minutes ago. She didn't want to drink at first—she was upset about something—but she seems to have calmed down. I won't give her much more water. I'm afraid it will make her sick. If she keeps this down I think the physician said we ought to try again in a few hours. She won't be ready for solid foods for another day or two."

Justus let out a sigh and reached her hand. "Thank the gods."

"See how much she is drinking?" Lucius said, looking at his big brother for approval.

"I do," he said gruffly, eyes brighter but looking almost like he was afraid to smile. "Did you help?"

Lucius hesitated, but Marcella nodded. "Yes. He's been very helpful."

"Well done," Justus said, reaching over the girl to touch his brother on the head. "Well done indeed."

Lucius's ears went dark red with pleasure at Justus's praise and Marcella couldn't help but smile to herself. Perhaps the girl would recover after all. Perhaps Justus would marry this strange little thing and their lives would regain some kind of normalcy. The villa had become, for all intents and purposes, a kind of hospital, every since Justus arrived home with his battered war prize.

"Why don't you hold her hand too?" Marcella suggested to her brother. "Then if she opens her eyes she'll find a handsome Appius man on either side."

Lucius slipped his small hand cautiously into Keziah's. "Like this?" he asked.

"Very good," Marcella said. It was strange to see Lucius—usually a raucously energetic seven-year old—so quiet and unsure.

"Look—" Lucius gasped.

The girl's eyes fluttered.

"She's waking up for real," he said.

Keziah opened her eyes and blinked rapidly. She could not open her eyes completely because they were still too swollen, but it was the most life any of the three siblings had seen in her since she had arrived at the villa.

IIIIIIII

It was Aden.

That was Keziah's first thought when she turned her heavy, disoriented gaze to the little boy who was holding her hand. Justus was on one side, holding her hand as always, the red-headed girl was still trying to get her to drink water. But there, on the hand that had lain largely ignored since they brought her here, was a small boy who appeared to be a few years older than Aden when he had died in Jerusalem in July.

Her eyes were too swollen to open them wide, and she strained to see more clearly.

She didn't understand. Her eyes darted to Justus and the red-haired girl, who nodded at her encouragingly, and she looked back to the little boy, who gave her a hesitant smile and patted her hand rather awkwardly.

Keziah burst into tears.

These were not the gentle, accidental tears she'd cried earlier out of simple pain—they were worse. Much worse.

These were the agonized wailings of a girl who has lost everything, who has seen the ghost of a boy she loved, who was stolen from life before he'd had a chance to live at all.

"Oh, God—_why_?" she wailed. "_No, no, no_—stop—stop it—" She tried to pull her hand away from the little boy, but he held on harder, looking baffled.

"Keziah—" Justus rose quickly and bent over her.

The red-headed girl pulled the cup away and stood a few feet off. She held the cup close to her chest and seemed to want to flee.

"Keziah—shh—it's all right—don't—please—don't cry—"

Keziah's cries rose in pitch and volume until the elegantly furnished Roman room rang with the keening of a sick, broken Jewish girl far from her home.

IIIIIIII

"What do I do?" Justus finally cried out, helpless, horrified at the screaming, miserable girl on the sleeping couch before him.

"Get away," she cried. "Get _away_—" She tugged weakly at the hand Lucius was holding and Justus understood that it was his sweet, smiling younger brother who had ignited Keziah's panic.

"Let go of her hand," he commanded the boy, who released her immediately and moved back, eyes wider than ever.

"What's wrong?" Lucius asked, his voice high pitched and nervous over Keziah's wailing. "What's wrong with her?"

She coughed on her tears, her face streaked and red and miserable. She moaned and bared her teeth and turned her face away from the bewildered little boy. "A devil—a demon—oh God—God save me—"

Lucius moved closer to Keziah and she screamed as if he'd poked her with a burning stick. The three Roman siblings jumped. Marcella was still clutching the cup of water in one hand, but covered her ear with the other.

"Get out," Justus shouted. "Both of you—out!" He waved his hand carelessly at his younger siblings, struggling to overcome his sense of panic as Keziah's face grew redder and her eyes almost rolled backwards.

He moved onto the couch and gathered her into his arms even as she fought against him. He held her firmly, not wishing to hurt her, but afraid that she might fling herself off the couch with how violently she was tossing her head from side to side. It had to be hurting her, but it seemed like the pang of the concussion was somehow less agonizing than seeing Lucius at her side.

He rocked her back and forth until her screams subsided, and even when she had quieted to gentle, pitiful tears that soaked the front of his tunic, Justus could still hear those raw, pained cries ringing in his ears.

IIIIIIII

He'd seen her cry.

It was such a stupid, meaningless promise she had made to herself, and yet, somehow, through all the hunger, misery, disorientation and pain she'd endured in the past two months, it was something she could cling to—a behavior she could train within herself and count on as everything else around her was changing.

She supposed she'd just have to bid her dignity farewell along with all the rest of the precious things she'd had snatched from her since her family descended into Jerusalem that summer. By now it had to be late summer, moving steadily into autumn.

She should have been formulating her escape plan, but she found it impossible to concentrate. Every time she imagined different scenarios by which she would leave the villa undetected, she always ran into some problem that her mind seemed unable to overcome. What if one of the slaves saw her and brought her back? She wasn't strong enough to fight. She couldn't rely on her speed to get away as she had done during the triumphal march—she had broken ribs and a shoulder only recently popped back into place that was still healing.

She thought about climbing into some kind of cart and letting it carry her away, but she had no sense of how the house acquired its food or supplies. Were there even carts that came to the villa? Was everything carried in by hand? What if she were discovered and returned to the centurion? Would he punish her? Maim her so she couldn't run away again? He didn't seem cruel enough to do such a thing, but Keziah had been the victim of a variety of nightmares over the past few weeks so deeply disturbing that she wasn't sure _what_ to believe anymore.

In one, she didn't have any hands. Jacob was there, explaining to her that she would never make a suitable carpenter because she needed her fingers to work with the wood.

"Perhaps you can kick the shavings into a corner for me," Dream Jacob suggested.

Keziah had awakened sickened at the image of her dead brother-in-law fresh in her mind, and wound her fingers together frenetically until she felt secure in their existence, rather than the horrifying stubs that had replaced them in her dream.

_Think_, she urged her mind. _Just play it out in your head. Down the hall…find the door…just walk out…if they think you're just going for a walk then…then they won't…but that boy…he'd follow you…or the red-haired girl…she talks…she talks so much…just a constant stream of words…it's like water…water that she made me drink even though I didn't want to drink it and—_

She would realize at this point that she was just letting her own nonsense flow freely through her mind and cut herself off with an internal snort of frustration.

Sometimes Justus tended to her. Other times it was the red-headed girl, who watched her carefully but still spoke to her kindly. The little dark-haired boy didn't come into the chamber anymore, and Keziah didn't ask why not. She wondered if he was a ghost. She almost wished he were. The thought of a child who was that similar to Aden still wandering around in the world, carefree with the promise of life uninterrupted.

They fed her solid food two days after her panicked fit—very little, very mushy stuff—was it bread? Keziah felt like a bird whose mother had chewed up the food in its own beak before passing it on to her baby.

Somehow she pushed away her revulsion and ate a few bites. Justus seemed thrilled at her progress, and Keziah had to admit to herself that the food—disgusting as it was—tasted like heaven after countless days of nothing.

Keziah felt her spirits lift ever so slightly for the first time since their ship had docked in Rome, when her heart pounded and she realized that she just might get away. She was going to heal. She would get stronger. She could still get away.

An hour later she vomited up the mush they had fed her and couldn't stop retching for an endless, disgusting few minutes afterward.

When she finally collapsed, exhausted, back onto the couch, Justus wiped her brow and the red-haired girl assured her they would try again soon. Keziah turned her face away from their healthy faces and normal-non bruised eyes.

It was hopeless.


	13. Tabularium

****_Author's Note: It's a "Refuge" double-whammy, two-for-the-price-of-one palooza! In honor of the long wait between updates, I present to you the next two chapters. Hooray!  
_

**Thirteen**

Marcella exhaled slowly as she and Lucius stepped out of the villa.

The air was heavy. For days the sky had been dark, and the clouds knotted themselves together to prevent any sunlight from peeking through. It was like curtaining off a furnace, and the September air was unforgiving. Every few hours thunder rolled across the sky, but no drops rained down to soothe the tension mounting in the city. Somehow all this was nothing when compared to the heaviness that seemed to fill the house.

"It's like some kind of horrible ceremony in there _all the time_," Lucius complained.

Marcella glanced at her brother. He was walking with his arms crossed tightly over his toga, which fell to his knees. A dark scowl knit his brows together.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that all the slaves tiptoe everywhere and everyone whispers and if you want to do anything it can't interfere with what goes on in _that room_."

Marcella wished she could tell Lucius not to be melodramatic, but he had a point. For the first few days, when the Jewess had lain unconscious in the airy room at the front of the villa, the household was hushed, waiting with bated breath to see if she would wake up. And, when she did, the world continued to center on her every movement—every swallow, every blink, every _bowel movement_, for Juno's sake. Marcella tried to accept it as temporary, tried not to think about how odd it was that after all those years of eligibility, Justus had finally settled on an emaciated Jewish prisoner for his wife.

Her father had accepted his share of oddballs before—their slaves were not always the most exotic or beautiful that the markets had to offer; sometimes they were chosen as a result of Claudius's kindness or sense of justice if he thought they had been treated unfairly in the past, rather than their looks or apparent suitability for the job.

"People always have the capacity to learn if they are willing," he told Marcella.

And, faced with a master who treated them well—neither the young women nor men were taken advantage of by either the family or the other slaves, and they were flogged for only the severest of infractions—they responded beautifully. Rarely had her father's kindness been taken advantage of by an untrustworthy patron or slave. Claudius had a keen sense about people.

He seemed very interested in the Jewish girl, and more than pleased that Justus had brought her, which is why Marcella had painfully maintained her silence. Yet Lucius was right about the near-ceremonial atmosphere of the house. Their interest in and respect for the girl had an almost religious fervor about it, and Justus was disciplined in his devotion to the point of obsession.

The part that made Marcella nearly mad with rage, however, was Keziah's reaction to her brother. Lucius had not reentered the chamber since the girl's horrifying fit several days before, and no one had mentioned Lucius's role in it either.

Yet the fact remained, hanging over the house the way the clouds had gathered heavily over the city. No one mentioned it, but the fact darkened and grew more ominous, just like the clouds that gathered and darkened and refused to depart but still had not released any rain.

Marcella had proposed a long walk into the Forum, specifically to visit the Tabularium, or records hall, in the hopes that the long marbled corridors with their endless shelves of scrolls would offer a distraction, some relief from the heat, or both. Lucius, more prone to be scolded for getting muddy than for rifling through his father's carefully-catalogued scrolls as Marcella had as a child, had accepted instantly. Despite the errand's rather pointless and potentially tedious nature, it was better than staying inside, waiting for the Jewess to sneeze.

"At least we're out now," Marcella said. "For a little while, anyway."

The Forum was not a long walk from the villa, and by the time they arrived, Marcella felt some of the tension had slipped from her shoulders, despite the less than enjoyable weather.

Passing through the throng of busy politicians and business people, Marcella, Lucius and the male slave who followed silently in their wake made their way to the Tabularium on the front slope of Capitoline Hill. Worshippers on their way to the Temple of Jupiter passed on either side of their trio. The temple had been burned in the fighting on the hill a year and a half ago, when Rome ripped itself apart before Emperor Vespasian finally came to power. The foundations of the original temple remained, and even as work for a lavish superstructure continued on the temple, devotees of the god continued to trickle up the hill to make their offerings and supplications.

"Marcella!"

She turned at hearing her name called and waved in return when she saw her friend Aurelia moving smoothly toward them. Her maidservant stumbled behind her but Aurelia didn't notice, turning her shoulders to avoid a man who seemed to have stepped deliberately into her path to get her attention.

Lucius groaned. "Not _her_," he said under his breath before Aurelia reached them.

"Darling, you look wonderful," Aurelia declared, kissing the air above both of Marcella's cheeks.

"And you, as always," Marcella replied.

"Oh you've brought Lucius with you!" Aurelia squealed. She clasped her hands to her chest and beamed. "By the _gods_ how he's grown! You'll be a man with a full beard by next week at the rate you're sprouting!"

Lucius pasted on the polite expression all three Appius children had adopted for use when adults exclaimed over how much they had grown. "Hello," he said.

Aurelia melted. "He is the _sweetest_," she exclaimed, swooping down and kissing him on both cheeks.

Marcella withheld a laugh at the scowl that grew on her brother's face. "What brings you out on this lovely day?" she asked.

"Charming, isn't it?" Aurelia agreed, wrinkling her nose and glancing at the dark sky.

"Hot, sticky, no breeze. Magnificent."

"I'm just husband hunting as usual," Aurelia said. "Father says I've gotten indiscreet and he's going to marry me off to the next man who asks if I don't make a better match."

Marcella was hardly surprised. She had met Maximus through Aurelia. He was exactly the kind of man she liked to have for a lover—charming, handsome, a little stupid, and voracious in his appetites. Now rumor had it that Aurelia's father could no longer overlook her sometimes wanton sexual behavior and insisted that if she did not marry soon, he would imprison her in their lavish villa.

"He has clients in Sicilia that are on the lookout for a wife, but Jupiter knows I don't want to move to an _island_. Not when everything is happening here! Enough of my gossip—what of the scandal that arrived at _your_ doorstep a fortnight ago? Gods, it seems like they just rode into the city yesterday—it's been so exciting with everyone returning from Jerusalem."

"Indeed," Marcella replied noncommittally. She hadn't really noticed the fervor that seemed to grip the city in the wake of the victorious Roman return. Naturally the Emperor had planned more building projects—partly to clean up the city after the wreckage left by the fire two years before, but partly to commemorate Rome's triumph over the rebellious province in Judea. There were games being held in celebration, but Marcella had not attended any; she had been too consumed with helping Justus watch his wounded fiancé-refugee and making sure he didn't starve himself to death.

"You would hardly know!" Aurelia chided her. "I've invited you to go to the games with me twice—and you didn't even respond the second time!"

"My apologies," she said. "Which gladiator has sparked your interest now?"

"Oh, I don't want to talk about any of them," Aurelia said, tossing her hand as if she were waving the subject aside like a troublesome fly. "The soldiers coming back from the campaign are far more interesting."

"I want to go to the games," Lucius interjected.

Aurelia raised her eyebrows. "Well, of course you do," she said. She turned back to Marcella. "Hasn't he been?" She looked back at Lucius. "Haven't you been?"

"No," Lucius said, slightly petulant. "I haven't. And Cato makes fun of me."

"Cato," Marcella interrupted, "is three years older than you. His father hardly pays him any mind. You ought to be grateful Father cares about you as much as he does. You'll go in a few years, Lucius."

"Maybe by the time you two are finished squawking I'll be old enough to go." Lucius sighed and dropped his shoulders.

His insolence was somehow endearing rather than insulting, and both girls laughed at his defeated posture.

"Oh, all right," Aurelia said, "I won't keep you any longer. But Marcella, you _will_ go to the games with me this week. I want to hear all about everything." She leaned a little closer and whispered, but it was clear that Lucius could still hear her. "Is it true that your brother is going to marry that girl he brought back with him?"

"So he says," Marcella responded, trying not to let any emotions slip through.

Aurelia drew back and rearranged her _palla_. "My my my my _my_," she said. "Your own Princess Bernice…"

Marcella thought of the waif-like girl lying on the sleeping couch in the villa, with her matching black eyes and strange, foreign muttering. The only comparison she could draw between Keziah and the legendary beauty Bernice was their heritage. It was difficult—well, impossible really—to imagine the half-starved child her brother had brought back from Jerusalem could captivate a man with her beauty, but somehow she had captivated Justus just the same.

"Something like that," she replied.

They waved farewell and Lucius let out a sigh as Aurelia moved from their sight.

"_Finally_."

"Lucius."

"Sorry," he said, clearly not sorry at all.

Marcella declined to comment or chastise her brother any further. Aurelia wasn't exactly a model for an upstanding Roman lady. They had been friends for many years, and Marcella enjoyed her company, but did not like for Lucius to spend much time around her if it could be helped—she was a poor model for both wife and mother, and Lucius (like Marcella) had never really had a mother anyway. The last thing he needed was to think that all women were as flighty or frivolous (however harmless) as Aurelia.

The siblings continued their trek up the sloping side of the hill toward the records hall. Sweat trickled down the groove in the center of Marcella's back, and she patted her brow with her _palla_ in as ladylike a manner as she could manage.

"Will it be cooler inside?" Lucius asked, mirroring Marcella's own hope.

"Surely it can't be worse," Marcella replied, then regretted her comment. Perhaps it would be even stuffier and more humid among the rows and rows of scrolls. The thought of returning to the gloominess that had settled over the house where she had grown up was even more disheartening, and neither one of them suggested that they abandon their outing.

Tall arches punctuated by Doric-style columns lit the long corridor of the Tabularium, which rose high over the Forum. They moved straight to the top level—the one with the most open air space, where the arches were highest. The corridors were cool and dim, and Marcella and Lucius looked at one another and nodded. It was better in here. Thank the gods.

"Let's split up," Lucius said.

Marcella looked at him skeptically, but he had already flashed her a smile and taken off in the opposite direction. "Don't!" Marcella called out, then finished, "…make a mess." She shrugged and rolled her eyes. Even if her younger brother had heard her, he wouldn't have minded her. But no matter. Lucius was remarkably well behaved for a seven year old boy; he would be all right wandering the shelves by himself.

Marcella adjusted her _palla_, letting it fall from her shoulders so it rested lightly on her forearms and moved at a leisurely pace up and down the long rows of scrolls. She let her mind wander, wondering how long it had been since she had been to a party with Aurelia. She almost felt as though she had lost her appetite for it. Once she had relished the endless feasting—the gorging and the subsequent purge—practically drowning in the most expensive wines that Rome had to offer. There were new singers and dancers, exotic fancies and every imaginable delight.

But it was always the same narrow people, the same pointless conversations, the same scandals. After several years of it, Marcella honestly just felt a little weary; she'd rather spend the evening at home with her father and Lucius than be caught in the middle of some orgy, watching Rome's finest force themselves on the hapless slaves and upon each other.

Marcella pulled a random scroll off the shelf nearest to her and unrolled it without reading it, then rolled it back up and put it back in its place. Marcella typically enjoyed reading, and was curious to see what sorts of things she could find inside the Tabularium, but today she felt restless—frustrated, even—and didn't feel like perusing random scrolls.

She could hear others shuffling through the long corridors of records, but the place seemed to be totally devoid of social energy. No lovers' rendezvous today.

She glanced over her shoulder when she heard sandaled footsteps behind her and stiffened immediately. There was no mistaking that gait, and as he drew closer, his face split into a grin. Marcella's first childish impulse was to run, but it was too late for that; he'd already seen her.

He grasped her arms lightly and kissed her on both cheeks. Marcella felt herself redden, and Felix did nothing to hide his broad grin when he noticed.

"Still gathering freckles on your arms, I see."

"I haven't been swimming," Marcella said. "So that seems unlikely."

Felix nodded. "Still, there are more on your arms. Fewer on your face. You started losing them on your cheeks when you were sixteen or so though."

"Fascinating," Marcella said dryly. There was a familiar fluttering in her chest when she thought about how closely he observed the details of her body and she hoped her pleasure at his attentiveness didn't show on her face. "What are you doing here?"

"A senator ought always to understand the past that he may make the best decisions possible in the future. I am here for an afternoon of study and reflection upon Rome's great and storied past.d"

Marcella fixed him with what she hoped was a withering stare.

"I followed you in," Felix admitted with an easy shrug. "I was in the Forum and saw you with Lucius, talking to Aurelia. She wasn't coming with you here, was she?" Felix frowned.

Marcella adjusted her palla to cover more of her body. "I'm not sure she could read much of what's in here," she said dryly.

"Not unless it was about gladiators or war heroes or heirs to small fortunes."

"Perhaps only large fortunes."

"Too true."

"What do you want, Felix?"

He raised his eyebrows and Marcella resisted the urge to step back. He seemed rather large and imposing, and Marcella began to feel trapped with her back to the shelf and Felix at her front. "I thought I had made that rather clear," he said.

"Why don't you just ask my father and force me into it the way you're supposed to then?"

"Because I know your father, and more importantly, I know you."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means he will consider my offer, then he will speak with you in private, and when you tell him that you'd rather be handmaiden to a fishmonger's wife than marry that old senator, he will politely decline my offer, and I will be no better off than I am now."

He didn't look old.

That was all Marcella could think when she was looking up into his green eyes. Yes, there were lines around those eyes, but they and the ones around his mouth disappeared into his smile when it touched his face. And really he wasn't _that_ old anyway. He had taken care of himself, and was still as fit in his thirties as he had been as a younger man. A hint of gray had begun to touch on his temples in the last year, but the rest of his hair still shone a warm golden-brown.

"What do you say to that?" he asked her.

She tried to swallow but her throat was too dry.

He leaned in.

"Felix Festus Octavius, if you try to kiss me in public, I swear I'll—"

"You'll what?" And he smiled and touched her cheek, her heart jumped, and—

A resounding crash sounded nearby and Marcella jumped away from him abruptly, ramming her shoulder into the shelf behind her, sending several scrolls falling to the ground. She swore in a decidedly unladylike fashion and dropped to her knees to retrieve them. Felix knelt too, trying to touch her hands while they picked them up, and Marcella jerked away and straightened, crossing her arms over her chest.

"_Stop it_."

She turned when she heard footsteps come running up behind her. Lucius was out of breath, his cheeks flushed.

"Marcella—we have to go—I didn't mean to—"

She realized that he had been the source of the crash and her heart sank. "Lucius, what did you do?"

She heard angry voices rising nearby and her heart raced even faster. She looked back at her brother, whose brows were knit in worry. He held out his hands, palms up in supplication. "It was an accident?"

Felix looked like he was trying not to laugh. "Go," he said. "I will deal with anyone that noticed you two here. Just go home."

Marcella wanted to thank him but was loath to do so. She opened and closed her mouth a few times. He snatched her hand and kissed her knuckles. "I'll come by the villa later."

"You're the best, Felix," Lucius said, and grabbed Marcella's hand and yanked her along. They made quick time down the corridor and back out into the oppressively muggy afternoon air. Lucius waved frantically at the slave who had escorted them to come along.

"Well. That was…"

Lucius looked up at her. "You won't tell Father, will you?"

"I don't even know what you did!" She glanced over her shoulder at the Tabularium. It didn't appear to be crumbling at its foundation or smoldering or spitting ash, so she supposed the damage wasn't irrevocable, whatever it was he'd knocked over. "Never mind, Lucius," she said. "We wanted to get out of the villa and we did. We just shouldn't return for some time. How long do you think it will take them to forget our faces?" She smiled, secretly reveling in his childish mischief. She should have known better than to take a seven-year old to a records hall and think he could be entertained.

He seemed skeptical of her silence. "You promise you won't tell?"

She made a face at him. "Lucius. When was the last time I tattled to Father? You imp. Of course I won't tell him anything. We were just lucky that Felix was there to hold them off for a bit so we could walk away without anyone noticing."

"He wants you to marry him, doesn't he?"

Marcella turned her head sharply to look at her younger brother. "What?"

"Felix. He wants to marry you." It wasn't a question this time.

Marcella forced a laugh and readjusted her _palla_, flipping the fabric upward so it covered her head more fully. "Lucius. Be serious. You know Felix is simply a friend of our family's, and one of Father's most valued colleagues in the Senate."

Lucius made a face. "Marcella, I might only be seven, but I'm not deaf, okay? And I'm not blind. You always liked him and he liked you too. He still likes you, even if you are pretending like you don't like him anymore."

"And what if he did make an offer to Father?" Marcella asked, more sarcastic than serious.

Lucius shrugged. "That would be all right, I suppose. You're getting to be an old maid. It's kind of weird that you're not married. Festus's older sister just got married and she's only fifteen."

"Festus's father couldn't wait to have that girl off his hands," Marcella remarked without thinking.

"Why?" Lucius asked.

"Because she was going to—" Marcella realized the answer was because the girl was going to find herself with child before she was married—she was a notorious flirt—but decided that explaining the intricacies of patrician morality and sexual boundaries to her seven-year-old brother was probably not something her father would really appreciate. "She was just restless, that's all," Marcella improvised. "She was ready to be married. It's different in every family. We have been very privileged to have the kind of choices that we have."

"What does that mean?" Lucius asked.

"It means some girls must be married earlier so they won't be a burden to their families. Our family has been blessed by Mercury. The year you were born there was a great fire in the city."

"I know," Lucius said, growing impatient with his sister. "They said the mad emperor set it and then blamed that cult—the Christians."

"Right. Hundreds of houses were burned to the ground. Many citizens lost their homes. People died. And when the fire finally stopped spreading, many people found that they had lost large portions of their income in the fire, even if they escaped with their lives. It was a very difficult time in Rome—all over the Empire, really."

"Marcella—" Lucius broke in impatiently.

"Look, the point is that our family has a lot of money, Lucius. Father has somehow managed to stay friends with all the right people in the Senate. We are well-respected and have little to worry about. This is what gives us choices. Sometimes choice is dictated by necessity and not by desire. Do you understand?"

"_Yes_, I understand. Gods, stop _talking _already. You know Father says that sometimes he thinks that even though suitors are all lining up for you that as soon as you start talking they'll all run away and hide?"

Marcella laughed in spite of herself, feeling some of the tension that was building in her shoulders as she preached at her poor brother slip away. "Yes, I know. Women shouldn't talk this much."

"Especially not _you_," Lucius said.

Marcella ruffled the top of his head and he smacked her hand away in annoyance. When they reached the villa, Marcella handed her _palla_ off to the maidservant waiting at the door and dunked her hands in a tepid basin of water. Her feet were dusty, but she didn't want to have them washed. Lucius took off around the corner, no doubt to find even more mischief.

Marcella made her way down the corridor toward her chamber, then stopped. She had promised Justus she would look in on Keziah when she returned from the Forum with Lucius. She tried to think of a more unpleasant errand, and, short of selling herself to work at the Roman docks for a day as a manual laborer hauling around net after net of smelly, flopping fish, she could think of nothing.

"I was just going to bring her some food, my lady," Isis said.

"I'll take it," Marcella said.

Isis hesitated, holding the tray a little closer to her body. "Are you sure, my lady?"

"It's no trouble," Marcella said. "And anyway, I promised my brother."

"I understand, my lady." Isis relinquished the small tray and retreated with a small bow from her waist.

She hesitated at the doorway. She thought of Aurelia's questioning eyes and slightly mocking questions about the Princess sighed and forced a pleasant expression onto her face. For Justus. She could do this for her brother.

"Good afternoon," she said brightly as she swept in with the tray. "I've brought you something to eat. I know that yesterday did not go as well as you might have hoped, but the physician has recommended this specifically, and I think that—"

Marcella cut herself off.

The bed that had been continuously occupied for over a fortnight was conspicuously empty. A pillow had fallen to the ground, and a blanket lay draped half on the bed and half on the floor, balled up at one end.

Keziah was gone.


	14. Progress

**Fourteen**

Keziah jerked sharply when she felt arms around her, but then there was a gentle shushing and she relaxed in spite of herself, resting her head on the warm chest behind her.

"What are you doing?" she murmured.

"We're going outside," Justus said, moving carefully across the room to the big window. Keziah shut her eyes as he stepped through the window hangings—the fabric brushed across her skin—and he climbed right out of the room and onto the grass.

The room overlooked part of the gardens on the first floor of the villa, close to a fountain that Keziah had been able to hear but not see for weeks. Justus walked on the cobblestone pathway until they reached a bench next to the fountain and sat there, still holding Keziah in his arms like a child.

She felt rather uncomfortable with this intimacy—being able to feel his breath rise and fall, nearly lying down in his lap with her arms and her breasts close to his body.

"I can sit up on my own, thank you," she said.

"No you can't," he replied briskly.

"I can—"

"No. _You cannot_. You were nearly killed by a horse trampling you in the road. You have broken ribs that are still healing—that's why it hurts to breathe—and you had a dislocated shoulder. This is nothing to say of the numerous bruises that covered you from top to bottom, including a face so swollen you couldn't see properly for a week. Your head isn't fully healed yet either—that will take months, if you don't test it, and you will likely have headaches the rest of your life. Are you happy now that you tried to run away?"

Keziah stared down at her hands in her lap, her heart suddenly beating faster.

"Look at me."

She tilted her head back and he angled his head to the side so their eyes met. The startling blue of his eyes was enough to make her feel off-balance, but what struck her were the dark circles that lay beneath them—deep and persistent. He had lost many hours of sleep in the past weeks, sitting at her side, holding her hand, tending to her injuries.

"Are you happy now you ran away?"

His tone was somewhere between patronizing and demanding and for whatever reason, the utter seriousness of his countenance made Keziah's mouth twitch. She let out a noise that was almost a giggle. "My lord—are you—_scolding_ me?"

He almost smiled back. "Perhaps I am." He held her gaze for a moment longer then softened his hold on her and adjusted her body carefully so that she could rest more comfortably in the crook of his arm with her legs dangling over his lap. "You should have something to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Fine. Drink then."

He gestured to a slave standing on the other side of the fountain that Keziah had not noticed was there. The girl disappeared and reappeared shortly with a small cup of watered wine. Justus dismissed her with a careless wave of his hand and lifted the cup to Keziah's lip.

"I'll drink myself, with your permission."

Justus raised both eyebrows and handed the cup to her. "And so the defiance returns. I am relieved and yet weary at the thought of dealing with your unrelenting hatred again on a daily basis."

"Yes, my lord," Keziah responded in as docile a tone as she could manage. She lifted the cup to her lips and took a cautious sip. The wine slipped down her throat easily. It still hurt her head to swallow—her headache was unending and frequently vicious in its intensity—but for now it was bearable.

"We find ourselves in an interesting predicament," Justus said.

"What's that, my lord?"

"I am sworn to marry you, and you are sworn to despise me."

"So it would seem."

"How can we alter this situation?"

Keziah took a deliberately slow sip from the cup to avoid answering.

"That is to say, what shall I do to make you stop hating me?"

She swallowed. "That isn't exactly the alteration I had in mind, my lord."

"And what do you propose?" he asked.

"That you let me leave instead of chaining me up somewhere and forcing me to run for my life."

Justus clenched his teeth and let out a frustrated huff of air. "Would you really prefer to be dead than the wife of a Roman?"

"I cannot marry you."

"And why not?" he demanded.

"God forbids it."

"And my gods have demanded it. Along with my father."

"Your father?" Keziah asked.

"Yes, my father." Justus adjusted his posture on the bench. Keziah's legs bumped the cool stone briefly and then were left to hang in the air again. "He had a dream. Or a vision. Something. Whatever it was, it was urgent enough that he commanded me to find a bride when I left for the campaign in Judea. I thought he was crazy. But he said I would know her when I saw her."

Keziah's eyes flickered up and then darted back down when she saw the intensity with which he was staring at her.

"And I did. Gods save me, but I knew it was you the moment I saw you in that alleyway. I haven't touched another woman since. I don't plan to touch another woman for the rest of my life."

Keziah felt very small and awkward, and utterly at a loss for words.

"You've never been with a man, have you, Keziah?" he asked. His voice was a little gentler this time, coaxing a response out of her instead of issuing mandates like he did so frequently.

"No," she said softly.

"I could tell," he said. "When I kissed you."

Keziah's heart was still fluttering helplessly in her chest. "Well. I was…promised," she admitted. "To someone. In the city. Before…before it…" Before it burned to the ground. Before the world turned to ash around her and everyone she loved was slaughtered by the troops of the man who now cradled her in his arms. "Before," she finished.

"What was he like?" Justus asked.

"Who?"

"The man you were going to marry."

Keziah lowered the cup and held it in her lap. "Well. I don't really know. I hardly knew him. He was very gentle. Very kind." Her eyes flickered to him then back to the cup in her hands.

Nothing like him, in other words.

"I see."

"He had a big, black beard."

Justus felt strongly aware of his smooth face with its hint of blonde stubble.

"I didn't like it," Keziah confessed.

Justus chuckled and Keziah seemed to smile in spite of herself. "That's childish," she said softly. "And disrespectful, I suppose, considering…"

Justus wanted to stop her macabre line of thinking before it went any further. "Merely a matter of preference," he said breezily. "Here—" He took her hand without thinking and laid it on his clean-shaven face. She went very still, staring down at the cup on her lap. Her fingers were cool and stiff and Justus wrapped his fingers around them to warm them up. He ran the backs of her fingers along his jaw line, watching how she blinked rapidly and her legs stiffened.

"Don't be afraid," he said.

"I'm not afraid."

"Don't lie to me either."

She pulled her hand out of his and cupped it around her other one. "All right," she said finally.

"Would you like to try eating something?"

It was no longer a command as it had been only moments before. "Do I have to?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Not immediately. Tonight, though." His dictatorial tone returned. "Tonight you will eat."

"As you wish, my lord."

Justus's face screwed up momentarily in distaste, then relaxed again. "Eventually you'll stop acquiescing in that horribly condescending tone as well, but for tonight we'll just start with feeding you."

"That seems fair."

They stared hard at one another for a long moment. The air was warm and a little sticky, but it felt better than lying unmoving in the same bed in the same room staring at the same sky for all those weeks.

Then Justus's mouth twitched in recognition of her sickly sweet tone and Keziah almost felt playful instead of outright defiant for a moment. The sides of her mouth seemed to turn gently upwards of their own accord, and just as she thought that the Centurion might smile back down at her, there was a horrible gasp and half-choked sounding scream coming from the window that Justus had just climbed out of so they could sit in the garden.

"ISIS! Father! Someone—please—Justus—hurry!"

There were footsteps—

"My lady, what—"

"She's gone, the girl has gone. She's not here! Where is she? _Where is she, Isis_? We have to find her—we have to find her before Justus finds her gone—he'll be sick with worry—by the gods, with as worried as he's been with her here, it would probably kill him—"

"My lady—"

"Why are you still standing there? Stupid woman—_hurry_—do you not understand—"

"My lady, _look_."

The slave woman pointed to the garden, where a bemused-looking Justus was staring over his shoulder back into Keziah's sick room at his panicked sister, with the "missing" Jewess peering wide-eyed from around his shoulder.

Marcella stood absolutely still for a moment, still clutching the tray full of food that she had brought for the girl. A heavy breeze stirred the window hangings so they brushed her arms and then fell back into place, and a roll of thunder broke the silence.

"We ought to go back inside," Justus said. He rose and carried Keziah the short distance back to the villa and stepped easily back into her room.

"What in Juno's name—" Marcella began.

"None of that," Justus said, cutting her off swiftly. "I have seen you throw your share of temper tantrums, little sister, but we won't be having one of those tonight. Thank you for bringing the tray. Keziah has just agreed to eat something. Will you stay and eat something with us as well? Your feet are dusty—Isis could wash them while we sit here and talk."

Marcella stared up at her brother narrow-eyed, confused at his calm demeanor and entirely infuriated at the way he seemed to have the situation completely under control. She had panicked when she had entered the room and found the Jewess missing. The only natural conclusion was that the little snake had decided to escape again, and it was going to fall to Marcella to find her before the entire house was in a panic. And now she wasn't missing at all.

She was sitting in the garden in Justus's lap, sipping wine from a small cup like a pampered child.

Marcella gritted her teeth and set down the tray with much more force than was necessary. "No," she said. "No, I shan't join you. I've been out all afternoon with Lucius and thought I would help. I can see that you have the situation in hand and my help isn't needed." She dared not look at the Jewess, afraid she'd want to smack whatever expression—contentment, confusion, contempt—right off her skinny face. She'd had enough of this scrawny war prisoner turning her home upside down and inside out and completely backwards and just plain _wrong._

Fed up, she turned on her dusty, sandaled heel and left the room before she said something she would have to apologize to Justus for later.

"Well then," Justus said. "I suppose it's just us for supper then."


	15. An Unplanned Tryst

****_Author's Note: Fair warning to all conservative readers - although the rating has been appropriately adjusted, this is definitely the spiciest of the chapters so far. You have been warned.  
_

**Fifteen**

Marcella descended on her father in the library like some kind of evil chthonic being, her red hair frizzy and wild from being out in the humid air all afternoon.

"We have to do something about the girl," she announced without prelude.

Claudius was surrounded by tidy stacks of scrolls, seated on a low stool at his stately marble desk in the middle of the _bibliotheca_. He glanced up, did a double take at his daughter's disheveled appearance and flushed cheeks, hid his smile, and looked back down, dipping his quill in ink.

"Oh? Perhaps you ought to call Isis first and have her do something about your hair. I've invited Felix for dinner."

Marcella stopped short. "Father, you _haven't_."

"I have," he said, his pen scratching neat marks across the parchment. "Keziah is improving remarkably. The villa needn't revolve around her every need any longer. Not that it should have to begin with, but Justus can be rather overbearing at times. I suppose we're lucky he didn't march a legion in here to stand guard. Regardless, it's time we brought company back into the villa before everyone begins to think we've converted the place into a mortuary or a temple. I hear what the servants have been saying. Naturally Justus and Keziah won't be joining us—she's too fragile, and he'll be useless apart from her anyway."

"She tried to run away," Marcella declared.

Claudius chuckled. "Oh, don't be dramatic, Marcella. The girl can hardly sit up, let alone walk across the bedchamber. She can't lift that curtain from the window, never mind climb out the window. How in Juno's name would she _run away_?"

"She tried to run away today," Marcella repeated stubbornly, feeling like a small child.

Her father looked up and fixed her with a chastening expression. "Marcella. That's enough."

Her throat closed up. She was tired and hot and dusty and still felt shaken up first from her encounter with Felix, and then the panic of thinking the girl had run away. Then the embarrassment of seeing that Justus had merely stolen her away for some disgusting, almost romantic-looking moment in the gardens—and now Felix was coming to the villa tonight? Marcella might as well fling herself into one of the fountains and just drown herself for the way this day was going.

"What's really bothering you?" Claudius asked.

Marcella sighed, uncomfortable with the piercing way her father was looking at her. "Justus is embarrassing himself, with the way he's acting around her. He's neglecting his duties."

"It's hardly your place to say what Justus's duties are and are not." Her father seemed very dignified just then, seated tall scholarly behind his desk. Marcella wiped an imaginary bit of dust from her cheek and shuffled her feet. Claudius continued.

"And your brother has just returned from one of the Empire's longer and more arduous campaigns. He has done everything the Emperor asked of him and more. He's a hero." Claudius rolled a scroll sharply and set it aside. "There is hardly room to criticize. And he's done precisely what the gods have decreed. He's brought home a wife. He is long overdue for marriage."

"I don't like her," Marcella said stubbornly.

"Wonderful," Claudius replied briskly, sweeping up a large pile of parchment and depositing it on a smaller table nearby. "Then you all can fight like filthy alley cats after I am gone because you hate the wife the gods chose for your older brother."

Marcella's mouth dropped open. "_Father_—that's hardly fair—"

"Isn't it?" he asked, turning to regard her momentarily. He raised his brows in a mildly chastening sort of way and turned back to his work.

"No!" Marcella barreled on. "It _isn't _fair. You know that I'm more willing than anyone else in this house to accept the misfits and oddities that seem to come dragging our way. It has nothing to do with how she looks or speaks or dresses her hair. I don't even care about that strange god of hers she's always prattling on about in her delirium. But her cruelty to Lucius is unacceptable."

"I think it's really up to me to decide what is and is not acceptable in this household," Claudius said quietly.

He didn't look at her then, but Marcella could hear the warning in his voice, saw the tension that drew his shoulders inward.

"Fine," she snapped. "Fine."

She turned on her heel and swept out of the room.

"Dinner is in an hour," her father called after her. "Clean up."

Furious and feeling more defiant than ever, Marcella considered going to dinner looking like an utter mess, but then she realized how grimy and disgusting she felt from being outside all day in the humid air. Isis was still serving Justus and Keziah, so she called one of the younger slave girls to come and wash her feet.

"Shall I dress your hair, my lady?" she asked.

Marcella examined her reflection critically in the small looking glass. She ought to have the girl remove the pins and redo the elegant up do that she had styled that morning before she and Lucius had left the house. But she honestly wanted to look ragged in front of her father, just to frustrate him. And maybe Felix wouldn't find her such marriageable material if he thought her unsightly.

"No," she said, waving her away. "It's fine. It's perfect for our guest." She made a face at herself in the mirror after the girl had left, feeling childish and frustrated and more than a little belligerent.

She splashed water on her face, pinned away a few stray curls, and added a bauble to her wrist so her father couldn't say she hadn't at least made an effort. Slipping on a slightly daintier pair of sandals, Marcella slipped into the hallway and headed for the smaller dining room to wait for her father and Felix to join her. She wasn't interested in greeting him at the door.

She ate a few grapes while she waited for them to arrive in the dining room, still feeling belligerent. But now while she waited, she added uncomfortable to her list of undesirable emotions. She could hear their voices as their footsteps approached at a relaxed pace.

"Felix! You're looking well. Terrible weather we're having. Marcella and Lucius went out today to escape the house, but there's really no getting away from it, is there?"

"No, there's not."

Marcella raised both brows at Felix and dropped her chin as the two of them entered the room. He really wasn't going to mention that he saw the two of them in the Forum today? Wasn't going to breathe a word of how Lucius had made a mess in the records hall and he had covered their tracks as they had raced away like a couple of second-rate criminals?

He adjusted his toga casually. "You should have seen it Claudius. It was madness in the Forum today—you would have hardly believed stoic old Julius and Secundus arguing over the slightest of issues—like a couple of grammar schoolchildren. Shocking."

Felix waited until Claudius went to take his seat and then winked—_winked_—at Marcella in full view of everyone.

Well, not that there really was an "everyone." It was only the three of them, and the slaves milling around. They were so miserable with the muggy, awful weather though, that all they wanted to do was be off their feet, sitting in the kitchens doing nothing.

Marcella could hardly blame them. This was the last place she wanted to be.

She sat in sullen silence and cooperated not at all when her father or Felix tried to include her in the conversation. Claudius glared at her several times and eventually gave up. Marcella was usually a lively conversationalist, but tonight she'd had enough of this household's shenanigans. Having Felix at dinner, pretending like he hadn't already seen her that afternoon, flirting with her right under her father's nose, was the final straw.

And then he had the nerve to raise the topic of marriage.

"You heard Brutus is so desperate to have his oldest daughter off his hands that he sweetened her bride price yet again, didn't you?"

Claudius shook his head and chuckled. "Oh, I shouldn't find it funny, but I do. The man is almost as mean as that girl."

"And she has almost as sharp a tongue as his wife."

"Almost," Claudius said.

"But not as sharp as Marcella," Felix said, trying to draw her into the conversation.

Marcella would not be baited. She plucked a date off a tray in front of her and ate it as slowly as possible. She glanced over at Felix and saw he was waiting for her to respond. She swallowed the sugared morsel. "Date?" she asked, gesturing to the platter. "They're delicious."

Claudius took one and popped it in his mouth. Immediately his countenance screwed up in distaste, and he spit out the date and had the slave nearest to him take it away. "Ah! Awful! Mine's soured! Marcella—are you sure yours was fresh?"

"Positive. Here—Felix—take one—"

"No, no—take it away—take it, in case they're rotten—" Claudius waved for the slave to take the platter away entirely. "Bring something else. Grapes or pears, with honey. Awful." He took a sip of his watered wine and swished it delicately in his mouth to take away the taste of the bad date. "Simply vile. I'm glad you didn't take one, Felix."

"Pity," Marcella muttered.

Felix heard her and grinned. "It's good you were ready to taste first, Marcella," he said. "If you had noticed that some of the dates had soured you could have called for the tray to be taken away without some fancy dignitary noticing."

"Oh? And when shall I be entertaining dignitaries as the lady of the house?" she asked.

"Senators' wives are always entertaining dignitaries," Felix said casually.

"So they are," she replied. "Lucky for me I shan't be marrying any senators."

"Oh? And who will you be marrying? Claudius?"

Marcella's father held up both hands in surrender. "As of yet undetermined, my friend. The gods have not spoken."

"They have remained silent a long time."

"As should you, if you knew what was prudent," Marcella snapped.

Claudius gave her a warning look, and one of the slaves brought a tray of honeyed pears, effectively stopping the marriage conversation. They moved on, but Marcella shot the darkest look she could muster in Felix's direction.

At the first sign that the meal was ending, Marcella rose abruptly and the men rose at a more leisurely pace, clearly regretting that it was over.

"I suppose I'll be going then," Felix said a little dryly. It was more than obvious that Marcella had wished him gone long ago.

"So soon?" Marcella asked acidly.

"So soon," Felix echoed. "I can tell you're devastated." He clasped hands with her father. "Thank you for having me. An excellent meal, and good company, as always."

"It has been too long, my friend. Forgive me for the Spartan atmosphere. Oh. And for the dates. And Justus will join us next time, I assure you."  
"And his new bride, I hope?" Felix asked.

Claudius smiled. "Another fortnight and perhaps you will be able to meet her. She is still weak from the long journey, but I would like a close friend like you to meet her before the wedding."

Marcella's eyes widened in horror. _Felix _meet that little terror? She went into convulsions whenever little Lucius was around. What was she going to do when she met a full-grown Roman senator? Start baying like a wolf and sprout fur around her ears, most likely. There was no way in Hades that little barbarian was going to be ready to present to society—even Felix—in a fortnight's time. She was barely eating mush. She wasn't even married to Justus yet.

Marcella bit down hard on her tongue to keep from commenting and crossed her arms hard across her chest, as if she could compress every furious bit of commentary within her chest and keep it from exploding from her mouth.

"What do you think, Marcella?" Claudius asked.

Marcella had been deliberately not listening.

"I'm not really sure," she said.

"About dinner?" Felix asked, raising one brow at her. "You usually have very strong opinions about the menu."

"Felix just asked us to dinner at his villa," Claudius repeated to her with waning patience.

"Well," Marcella said rudely, childishly, "I really couldn't care less."

Felix suppressed a smile and Marcella heard her father sigh.

He gave a polite half-bow. "Goodnight, Marcella."

"Goodnight."

She left the dining room before her father could tell her off for acting like a little girl—and not in an endearing sort of way.

The truth was she was angry with herself now for the way she had spoken to her father, and the way she had acted in front of Felix.

She should apologize.

Then, in character with her entirely impetuous behavior all day, she decided she would.

Right then. By herself. Immediately.

She changed into slightly heartier leather sandals, slipped the bangle from her wrist and dropped it on her nightstand. It was warm enough outside that Marcella didn't bother to grab a cloak, and she set off on foot—alone—for Felix's large villa atop Capitoline Hill. It was a rather long walk away, but she felt sort of invisible in the dark, and it was relief to feel invisible when she didn't want to be seen for the childish idiot she'd been acting like all evening.

What she would have liked best at that moment was a long swim in the sea, tossed about in the shallows, the seaweed catching on her legs, fighting against the waves, her muscles straining with exhaustion. She wanted to feel wild, to feel caught up and out of control. But there was no sense in swimming endless laps in the gardens now; she'd feel just as trapped when she finished as when she started. It was too contained; too prim; too artificial.

She settled for walking faster, arms swinging inelegantly, efficient frustration in motion. She began to breathe harder, kicking up the dust around her feet. The air felt heavy as she sucked it down her windpipe.

The thunder rolled louder and lightning flashed across the sky. Marcella looked up, worried for a moment, but it had been doing that for days. It was not going to rain, it had been threatening to do so for days without a single—water fell onto her arms. Then more, on her head.

Not gentle sprinkling, but heavy, almost painful droplets, crashing onto her skull and exploding onto her skin. She vainly covered her head, but by the time she reached Felix's villa, she was soaked through, her hair plastered to her back and her cheeks, her toga—which had been practical in the warmth when she set out—completely stuck to her body and nearly see-through. She was also freezing. The temperature had dropped nearly instantly in just a few minutes, and she crossed her arms over her chest and shivered violently.

Marcella knew which window was Felix's. She would not go to the front door and have every slave tongue in Rome going on and on about how Marcella Appius had shown up after dinner at Senator Felix Festus Octavius's villa looking like a half-drowned harlot. Nor would she go to the kitchens and let it start with the cooks and work its way up and up the food chain in the city until it finally reached her father's apparently unsuspecting ears.

She covered her head ineffectively as she darted beneath the trees, hopping over the roots and skimming past the shrubs on her old pathway. She wasn't looking where she was going; it was all muscle memory and desperation at this point. She hardly stumbled as she moved on the familiar route from front gate to bedroom window undetected.

"Felix!" she wailed miserably beneath his window, praying his was inside his chambers. "_Felix_!"

He was, thank the gods.

His head appeared almost immediately, and he looked downright shocked.

"You came!" he shouted over the rain. "By the gods—Marcella—what are you _doing_ here?"

"Shall we talk about it when I come inside? It's raining a bit, you ass!"

His face split into a grin at this and he leaned outside, mindless of how he immediately became soaked, and put his hands beneath her armpits. "Jump," he commanded.

He lifted her into the room without much grace, but fairly effectively. She banged her knee on the windowsill coming up and swore violently, shaking from the cold and adrenaline of half-running all the way to his villa in the dark.

"Did you come over here by yourself?" he asked her.

She nodded. Well, it was half-nod, half shudder.

"Stupid girl—" Felix yanked a blanket from his sleeping couch and flung it around her shoulders. He stared openly at her breasts before he closed the blanket tightly around her front and moved away from her like she was diseased. "You could have—gods, anything could have happened to you. What are you doing here?"

Marcella had rehearsed her speech on the way over.

But she hadn't planned on the sky opening up and emptying its contents, held tightly in check for endless, miserable days, all in one blow. And after that had happened she had forgotten precisely everything she had planned to say.

"Well. I came—because at dinner—what you said—about the proposal—well—I won't marry you, Felix—"

"I believe you've made that rather clear on a number of previous occasions," Felix said dryly. "What I'd like to know is why you've decided to come here unescorted, on foot, at night, after I've already seen you twice today, to inform me of this distasteful news."

Marcella cleared her throat. "Well. I wanted to discuss it."

Felix stopped and stared at her.

Marcella felt deeply conscious of her hair dripping on his expensive tile floors, her skin prickling with gooseflesh, her toes purpling with the chill.

"Discuss it." He looked her over.

She felt like an idiot.

"Yes," she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She had to admit it sounded rather dignified, even if she must look like a rat plucked out a barrel by a sailor and then shook out by its tail. "You cannot continue making advances and—and discussing marriage the way you do in front of my father when you know I am entirely averse to marrying you. It is totally unacceptable and I demand you stop it at once."

"Go on."

"In fact, I demand that you stop visiting my house altogether and humiliating me under my own roof. I ought to have a little dignity as a woman of rank in my father's own home."

He was quiet for a moment—just long enough to let it sink it that she was standing there wrapped in his blanket while her own clothing dripped mercilessly onto the floor of _his_ home now. Outside the storm raged on.

"So let me make sure I have understood you correctly. You left your father's house without telling anyone. You walked here in the rain without an escort—"

"It wasn't raining when I left!"

"Marcella, please don't interrupt."

"Sorry."

"Very well. Without an escort. At night—when you could have been robbed—"

"I'm not carrying any valuables!"

"—or _molested_, which is much more likely, especially since you didn't bother to wear a cloak or conceal the fact that you're of noble birth."

She dropped her head.

"_Then_ you come to the window of my bedroom, _demand_ that I pull you inside as if we were still lovers, even though we haven't been for years. You won't let me touch you anymore, you don't want to marry me, you'll _never_ want to marry me, and now you're standing here lecturing me half-dressed in my home. Have I missed anything, darling?"

"Don't call me darling," she snapped.

Felix shook his head. "This is ridiculous. I'm going to give you two options."

"I'm not going to marry you, Felix!" she shouted.

"Marriage isn't one of the options right now. The first option is that you take a cloak and a litter and go home. The second is that you stay."

She eyed him warily. "Stay, and…"

"You know what."

Her mouth dropped open. "How dare you. How _dare _you suggest that I came here for _that_. After all this time has passed—after—after _everything_ I just said. Like I'm some kind of fishmonger's wife—like some kind of—some kind of _whore_."

He came closer.

"For god's sake, you stay away from me."

"Do you want the cloak and the litter or not, Marcella?" he asked.

She didn't. She most certainly did not.

His eyes were dark and inviting, and the worry lines that had ringed them at dinner had disappeared entirely, erased by desire. The tension that had drawn his jaw tight was similarly loosened. He was practically panting with desire.

"Let me look at you, Marcella," he said softly. "You're always running away from me."

She went very still and he reached up slowly and touched the folds of the blanket where she was clutching between her breasts. His hands were warm and her grip tightened instinctively, but then she wanted him to look at her, and she let go. He hesitated, and then he lifted the blanket over her shoulders and let it fall behind her with a heavy thump onto the tile flooring.

The cold rushed up at her all at once and Marcella's proud posture disappeared. Gooseflesh appeared on her skin and her nipples hardened and she crossed her arms over her chest and shrank away from him.

"No…" He stepped toward her and she stepped back, but her step was smaller and more uncertain where his was large and powerful and absolutely positive of what he wanted, and he wrapped one large, muscular arm around her and pulled her into his chest. She laid both her hands against him, vaguely resisting—ineffective, knees weak, knowing if he suddenly jerked his arm away that she'd collapse on the floor in an instant.

"There," he said, pulling her closer. Her body began to mold to his. "There…" His free hand began to touch her: her face and her neck and her breasts. Her body arched toward him in spite of herself. He put his hand between her legs and she almost collapsed on it. Her knees trembled as his fingers moved softly.

"There you are, my Marcella," he whispered.

"We can't do this," she said, already breathless.

"Last chance for the litter," he replied, momentarily taking his hand out from between her legs.

Marcella felt a sharp sensation of loss. Chest rising and falling, she considered leaving. Her head began to clear. What would her father say when she showed up? Would he believe her that she had truly just wanted to apologize to Felix? Would he see straight through to the haze of passion that still surrounded her, filled her, began to bind her to Felix once more.

"No more cloak?" she managed to ask.

"No," he said. "Litter or nothing."

"Nothing," Marcella said, and the word was hardly out of her mouth before he was pushing her wet garments off her shoulders, falling to his knees, taking her breasts in his mouth.

The sensation was overwhelming, and Marcella fell too.

He was gentle with her at first, but Felix had always known exactly what Marcella liked, and he worked her back onto the floor, pulling her wet toga down to her waist, warming her shoulders and arms and stomach with his hands, working her breasts with his tongue—first the left, and then the right, never neglecting one for the other. Just when she thought that the one nipple was growing too tight, too sensitive, he would switch to the other, working his tongue around and around, occasionally flicking it with the tip of his tongue.

Her hips began to move rhythmically against him, but he wouldn't let her rush him.

"Felix," she whimpered. "Felix, please…"

"Please nothing," he growled against her naked flesh, easing her toga down further, still not revealing her most private parts. "I have waited to have you again for years." He sat up beside her and pulled her into his lap. He was a little rough. He kissed her on the mouth. "I am going to keep you all night. And I am going to have you over and over again." He kissed her softly this time. "Don't you dare rush me, darling. Now come here."

He stood up and pulled her to her feet. She helped him undo the clasps that held his toga in place and for a moment she stood dumbly in front of him, touching his chest. She planted soft kisses across him. He groaned and pulled her against him.

She moaned in returned when she felt his hardness pressing into her lower belly. She reached down instantly and grabbed him and he pushed her hand away. "Not. _Yet_," he said, his voice tight with the effort of resisting her.

They moved toward his sleeping couch, kissing sloppily, Felix working her wet toga off of her, Marcella pushing more clumsily at his clothes. Marcella kicked her sandals away impatiently as she climbed onto his lap. His erection was pressing hot and ready against her soft thighs where she climbed all over him. Her hair was falling all over them, sticking to their bodies. They were beginning to sweat, to gasp, to grab at one another, growing more graceless as their passion grew and their patience waned.

Marcella positioned herself over him, prepared to slip—Felix stopped her again.

She cried out in frustration, kissed him hard, bit down on his lip until he cried out in return. Angrily, he flipped her over and slipped inside her so fast that it was almost painful.

She shouted his name and jerked backwards and he stopped immediately, guiltily and started to pull back. She stopped him and they both went still for a moment, embarrassed by how caught up they had been. Felix lay still on top of her for a moment. They were both breathing hard.

"Felix…" Marcella finally whispered.

He lifted his head and looked down at her.

"You're crushing my chest," she whispered, and smiled a little.

He gave her one of those incredibly sexy side smiles and she lifted her hips and wiggled beneath him and he shut his eyes.

"_Gods_, Marcella."

Felix gripped her hips and dug himself deeply inside of her. Marcella's back and neck arched backwards as he moved into her, and she moaned, long and helpless. He let go of her hips and pulled back, and Marcella's body relaxed as she gave a high-pitched sigh—almost a whimper. Then, she gave a shout of surprise and delight as he slammed against her hard and began to move rhythmically.

He was supporting himself on his hands, his arms straining, his face red, sweat beading on his forehead. It rolled down his nose and cheeks and fell onto Marcella's smooth, white stomach. The droplets tickled where they ran off her sides, but Marcella hardly noticed as Felix's broad, heavy chest came down on her suddenly, crushing her breasts and making it hard to breathe.

She moved beneath him senselessly—even as he established a steady rhythm, Marcella tossed her head from side to side, trying to catch her breath and crying out as the pressure of the pleasure mounting between her legs intensified.

"Marcella," he groaned into her ear. He sucked on her earlobe and nipped at her neck and Marcella gasped harder.

"Come for me," he said. "Come for me, sweetheart."

The sound of his voice—ragged and desperate against her skin—sent her over the edge. Her muscles tightened and her eyes shot open wide and the noise that tore from her throat was overwhelmed and satisfied and completely animalistic and unfamiliar.

Outside the storm raged on.

For what seemed like a long time, Marcella lay beneath him, unable to move or think anything other than a weak, satisfied _yes_. By all the gods, yes.

There was a crash of thunder and she suddenly found it hard to breathe and pushed Felix off of her. He rolled off immediately but pulled her into his arms, kissing her neck and pushing her hair out of her face. Their bodies were sticky and wretchedly wanton, legs still intertwined, skin seeking skin. She didn't want to be anywhere but right up against him after so long apart.

Then she shifted and her soft foot touched leather. Marcella looked down, confused. Then she looked at Felix. His eyes were closed and there was a hint of a smile playing around his mouth.

Marcella began to giggle uncontrollably.

Felix opened his eyes and sat up halfway. "What?" he asked.

She only laughed harder, rolling onto her side, not bothering to cover her naked body.

"What?" he asked again, more urgently. He was beginning to look around the room, nervous, agitated, worried.

"You left your sandals on!" Marcella finally squealed, and fell into a fresh bout of laughter.

He stared at her, open-mouthed, shocked. He looked down at his feet, totally naked except for his sandals, then he gave a shout of laughter and pulled her back to him. "Get over here—you minx—" He kissed her hard until she was too breathless to laugh, too breathless to do anything but be kissed by him and when he finally let her go, she lay beneath him for a moment, catching her breath, then finally managed to say, mischievously, "Well. Aren't you going to take them off?"

He popped her on her hip and kissed her again before he leaned down to untie the leather laces, grinning and shaking his head. "By the gods, woman, you make me absolutely mad. In every way possible."

"I'm staying with you all night," she said.

He stroked her cheek. "Marcella."

"I want you again."

He laughed. "So soon? Darling—"

She was too happy to care what he thought of her crawling to him like this in the night, too happy to care if he was going to propose marriage again and she'd have to turn him down. All she wanted was Felix: his mouth on hers and his hands all over her body.

She pulled his head down, and they were lost.


End file.
